


Return Of The Akumas

by Masked_R



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:35:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 30,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29023572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masked_R/pseuds/Masked_R
Summary: After an Akuma gets out of Hawk Moth’s control and turns the citizens of Paris back into their Akumatized selves, they have to learn to live with their new forms until the Akuma is defeated.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Vivica, Alix Kubdel & Nathaniel Kurtzberg, Alya Césaire & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire & Nora Césaire, Anarka Couffaine & Juleka Couffaine & Luka Couffaine, André Glacier & Philippe, Chloé Bourgeois & Alya Césaire, Chris Lahiffe & Nino Lahiffe, Chris Lahiffe & Santa Claus, Ella Césaire & Etta Césaire, Félix Graham de Vanily & XY, Félix Graham de Vanily/Lila Rossi, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth & Nathalie Sancoeur, Jagged Stone & Vincent Aza, Juleka Couffaine & Luka Couffaine, Juleka Couffaine/Rose Lavillant, Kagami Tsurugi & Tomoe Tsurugi, Lila Rossi & XY, Lê Chiến Kim/Ondine, Majordome Jean | Butler Jean & Félix Graham de Vanily, Majordome Jean | Butler Jean & Lila Rossi, Majordome Jean | Butler Jean & XY, Manon Chamack & Nadja Chamack, Marc Anciel & Nathaniel Kurtzberg, Marc Anciel/Nathaniel Kurtzberg, Max Kanté & Alix Kubdel, Max Kanté & Claudie Kanté, Max Kanté & Markov, Max Kanté & Nathaniel Kurtzberg, Nora Césaire & Ella Césaire & Etta Césaire, Ondine (Miraculous Ladybug) & Anarka Couffaine, Ondine (Miraculous Ladybug) & Juleka Couffaine, Otis Césaire & Alya Césaire, Otis Césaire & Ella Césaire & Etta Césaire, Otis Césaire & Nora Césaire, Santa Claus & Le Marchand de Sable | Sandboy, Théo Barbot & Alya Césaire, Vincent Aza/Vivica
Comments: 129
Kudos: 112





	1. Juleka Couffaine

Juleka wasn't one to complain. When bad stuff happened, she tried to just go with it. And she would like to think that she had been fairly patient when her family and friends were akumatized into ruthless monsters. When Mylène became Horrificator and started terrorising the school, she tried to just go with it. When her mother literally kidnapped her and her friends and started attacking the Music Festival as Captain Hardrock, she just sat calmly in the captain’s ship. But this. This was something Juleka just couldn’t tolerate....

“NO NO NO NO NO!” Reflekta screamed as she looked down at her hands. It has been a normal afternoon, showed up at school, listened to Rose going on about Prince Ali, Chloé was being an idiot as per usual, same old same old. Then there was a swarm of purple around each person in the room…

Looking around the room, she was completely freaking out. Evillustator was panicking as the comic he had been drawing before this happened had come to life. Timebreaker was trying to comfort him, but, realising she couldn’t touch anyone, just broke down in the middle of the room. Vanisher was yelling at everyone, but no one could see her. Antibug was making fun of Dark Cupid, who was crushed under Gamer’s robot. Lady Wifi and Bubbler were both trying to comfort each other. Marionette and Adrien, who were suspiciously the only ones who weren’t re-akumatized seemed to be helping Zombizou, who was hyperventilating. In fact, the only one who wasn’t panicking, was Volpina, who just looked confused, yet kind of happy.

Reflekta herself was panicking. She HATED Reflekta. Despised her! Why?! Just why?! However, she was going to do her best to contain her frustration, because there was someone who needed help more than her.

Princess Fragrance was crying in the corner. Juleka thought back to whenever Rose first turned into Princess Fragrance, and afterwards she went to a fireworks display with Prince Ali. She didn’t know how she got there, and it ended up being Juleka who explained it to her, and Rose was devastated. She was wracked with guilt for weeks that she hurt a lot of people, and now she had turned into that again.

“Rose…” Juleka started.

“Don’t come near me!” she replied, “I’m a monster!”

Reflekta’s heart sank. This was just like last time, and then it took weeks until Rose was back to normal.

“No, you’re not” Reflekta walked over and crouched down next to the crying princess, “You’re Rose, you’re sweet, and kind, and adorable, you’re not Princess Fragrance”

“Look at me!”

“I am!” Reflekta responded, “And I still just see Rose. Look around you! You and I got it easy, nobody can see Sabrina and Alix can’t even touch anyone. Come on, Rose, pull yourself together!”

Princess Fragrance seemed to really stop to think about these words before responding, but when she did, it was through tears.

“You’re right,” she said

Now knowing that Rose is fine, Juleka just broke. Reflekta started panicking, yelling to Rose asking about what happened, why all the Akumas were back, why they were still able to think clearly inside the Akumas. Amid all the chaos, nobody noticed two students sneaking out of the classroom, and no one paid any attention to the two superheroes who were now running along Paris’ rooftops, searching for whoever did this to the residents of the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first work, so I'm hoping you enjoy. I don't really have a plan for this fic, I'm just gonna keep writing and see where it takes me, so chapter two probably won't take too long.


	2. Bob Roth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bob Roth is akumatized after attempting to sue Silencer

Bob Roth was one to complain. So when he was attacked by the leader of that band, Kitten Division, or whatever, he wasn’t going to just stand by and let that happen. He had been trying with a lawsuit for a while now, but no one would take his case. The reasoning was that since Silencer was under Hawk Moth’s control when he attacked Bob, he couldn’t be held responsible for his actions.

“I don’t know what to tell you, sir, you just don’t have any legal ground here. Silencer isn’t liable, Hawk Moth is, and since we don’t know who Hawk Moth is, he is essentially untouchable legally.”

But that didn’t mean Bob wouldn’t try.

“I don’t care!” He yelled at the lawyer, “ There must be something, a loophole we can exploit, a technicality that we can use to our advantage.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I just can’t help you” The lawyer replied.

“GAAAH, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer”

“I am your lawyer”

“Well, then, you’re fired!”

* * *

“I sense the anger of a man believing he has been wronged, such malice and frustration is the perfect host for my evil Akuma” Hawk Moth announced, grabbing a butterfly and turning it into an Akuma. He then sends it off through a large window.

“Go forth, my evil Akuma, and further corrupt this businessman!”

* * *

Bob Roth is walking out of the law firm towards his car. As he opens the door, the Akuma flies down and goes into his gold necklace.

“Spirifyer” Hawk Moth’s voice says, “So, no one believes that these Akumas running amuck are a problem that deserves to be dealt with? Well, I’m giving you the power to bring all of the Akumas back, and to evade being caught by Ladybug and Cat Noir. However, if you wish to permanently deal with these nuicesces, you must take their Miraculous and bring them to me.”

“Of course Hawk Moth”

* * *

Where mere moments ago stood Bob Roth, now stood the new supervillain, Spyrifyer, a large, purple-skinned man with sunglasses. In his hand, replacing what was once a gold necklace was now a golden staff. He looks toward the law firm and begins to walk back toward it. The monster bursts through the door and enters the lawyer’s office.

“You!” Spirifyer yells at him.

“Mr Roth…”

“So, you think villains can’t be held responsible for what they do, eh? Well then, it’ll be perfectly fine if I do this”

Spiritfyer begins wrecking the room, throwing books and papers about the place as the lawyer yells for him to stop.

“But, this isn’t nearly enough, is it?” says the monster, “These are just a few documents, nothing important. Let’s see what happens when the whole of Paris has to suffer this. You think there’ll be “no legal ground” then, huh?”

At this, Spirifyer pointed the golden staff into the air and shot a huge beam out of it. The beam went through the roof and vanished out of sight. Suddenly a scream is heard from outside, and the lawyer looks out to see a man outside being engulfed in purple.

“What did you do?!” The lawyer said. Outside the purple had gone and in its place was the Akuma, Simon Says, who was having a panic attack outside.

“What have you done?” The lawyer repeated, turning around, to find that the room was empty. Spirifyer has vanished as quickly as he had appeared, and all he had to show for it was the supervillain.

The lawyer went to call the police, but before he could, he looked out of the window again, and saw that the single, small beam had become a giant wave that covered the entire city.

* * *

As the wave crossed the city, it passed over the Agreste Mansion.

“Excellent work, Spirifyer!” The magical terrorist praised “Launch the wave now and you can confuse the residents of the city to confuse Ladybug and Cat...” As he was speaking, the communication between the two of them was cut.

“What? What happened? Spirifyer, are you there?” At this, Hawk Moth looked down, and realised why he wasn’t able to reach the Akuma anymore. He was no longer Hawk Moth. He had been transformed into the Collector.

“Oh no”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically just an explanation for why everyone is akumatized again. The entire point is that nobody can find Spirifyer and Hawk Moth can't call him back because he isn't Hawk Moth anymore, so this is basically the setup for the rest of the story.


	3. Luka Couffaine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luka helps his sister get over turning back into Reflekta

Luka was always able to detect how people were feeling through music. He was never really able to explain it through words, and most people didn’t understand it, but he was always able to. He never found anything that could explain it, but he never really minded. He was fine just experiencing their emotions.

Until today.

Never before had Luka felt so much pain and despair. Not even Heroes’ Day compared to this. Everywhere he looked he saw people panicking and then he would FEEL them panicking. His manager let him take the day off from pizza delivery since he couldn’t say anything anymore. Luka had become Silencer again, and since he didn’t want to steal anyone’s voice, he was completely silent. However, the pain he felt during the day was NOTHING compared to coming home to find Reflekta crying in their shared room. Captain Hardrock, who didn’t really seem to mind that she was a pirate captain now, was trying to comfort her, but Juleka was so upset that she wouldn’t listen, and seeing Silencer in place of Luka just seemed to upset her even more.

“Go away Luka.... please…. Just leave me alone….” Juleka sniffed, which just infuriated Luka even more. How dare someone do this to his sister? And the worst part was, that he felt that he couldn’t help. He was silent, helpless, as his sister sat there, crying.

That night they had dinner in the living room, because, apparently the new akumatized version of the Liberty just didn't have a kitchen, which was odd, because basically everything else was the same. Anarka ended up just ordering takeout, and while she went to collect it, Luka and Juleka watched TV. The news was just text, as Nadja Chamack refused to go on because she had been turned back into Prime Queen. It basically just explained that everyone in Paris who had previously been akumatized had been turned back into an Akuma, and then every time they try to destroy the akumatized objects, it rebuilds itself with purple energy. They then had a spoken message from Rogercop.

“We here in the police force are working hard to insure that justice prevails in the streets of Paris,” he said, robotically, “We believe this to be the work of the magical terrorist Hawk Moth.”

No duh, Silencer thought

“We also have evidence from the lawyer, Bob Shark, that the Akuma in question is the head of the well-known record label, Bob Roth Records…”

At this Luka sat upright and became absolutely livid. Bob Roth? The one who stole Kitty Section’s music and had him akumatized the first time? That Bob Roth?

Luka was still able to feel the intense misery around him from Juleka, and he got even angrier. Bob Roth can’t do this to her! He was a corrupt businessman, an awful person who rips people off and steals for a living, he had no right.

Suddenly, he had an idea. Silencer went into his room and brought back an item he knew could restore joy to his sister. And even if it didn’t he at least had to try. He tapped Reflekta on the shoulder, sat down and began to play.

He played the song that he had been feeling emanating off her, the sad and depressing melody that had been taunting him for hours, but changed it slightly in order to make it more hopeful, more joyful and happy. At first, Reflekta seemed unimpressed, but gradually she began to enjoy herself more, and by the time Anarka had gotten back with the food, Juleka had stopped crying completely, and her and Anarka even joined in with the song.

At the end of the day, Silencer slept easy, and while he could still feel his sister’s sad song, radiating from her, he could also feel the more hopeful melody that he had played for her as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I probably shouldn't rush this so much, I mean, I have written three chapters in less than a day, but if I have ideas, I'm gonna keep writing, and I really hope you guys don't think I'm rushing this. I am trying to make it interesting, but I really enjoy writing these, so whenever I can, I'll add another chapter. I doubt you're complaining because it means more stuff for you to read. And since these aren't long, they don't take too long to write, so all of this adds up to me making lots of chapters. Not like I have anything better to do.


	4. Nadja Chamack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nadja comes home to Puppeteer wrecking the house

The night that Spirifyer turned all of Paris into Akumas was one of the worst nights of Nadja Chamack’s life. She called in saying that she couldn’t do the news that night, and used the excuse that she was traumatized about turning back into Prime Queen, and while that wasn’t strictly false, she did hate her new form, but the real reason that she couldn’t do the news that night was because of…

“Mommy! Mommy! Look!”

She had to deal with Puppeteer. And while Nadja was a great mom, this was just too much. Manon was already completely nuts, now with the ability to both fly and bring her toys to life, anyone would be driven nuts.

But Nadja wasn’t anyone, and Prime Queen was even less than anyone. However, after a few hours of trying to look after her, even she was failing. So far, Puppeteer had managed to bring her toy soldiers to life, bring her stuffed animals to life, which resulted in the two groups of toys fighting each other and flooding the kitchen. Then, Nadja attempted to break the toy wand out of frustration, and even after it magically repaired itself, Puppeteer continued to throw a giant temper tantrum.

She retaliated by throwing all of these toys through a screen into who knows where, as she wasn’t really sure how these powers worked. But Puppeteer was no match for her and ended up, just, breaking the screen.

After that, Prime Queen realised something.

She was still Nadja.

And a great supervillain, Nadja is not. But if Nadja Chamack is anything, it’s a great parent.

“THAT’S IT!” She yelled at Puppeteer, “TO YOUR ROOM!”

For a moment, the little girl seemed shocked, as though she had forgotten that her mother was capable of something as harsh as this, but after this shock subsided, she remembered what SHE was capable of, and simply summoned her dolls, and pointed at them, threateningly.

Prime Queen tried everything, she broke the wand, she called the police, who were too busy searching for Bob Roth, she thought about contacting Marinette, but as far as she was aware, Marinette never dealt with Puppeteer. She thought of any Akumas who were able to control people, but they were probably having their own problems at the moment. In the end, Prime Queen just gave up.

She sat down at her kitchen table, put her head on the table. What could she do now? Nothing.

* * *

Now Puppeteer was ignoring her mother entirely. All she wanted was to play about with her new powers. She was a kid, and she had just been turned into a magic fairy, what else would she do? Her mom wasn’t gonna stop that. So she just kept playing.

But after a few hours, she came down for dinner, only to find her mother on the kitchen table crying silently, and Manon began to feel kind of guilty. Did she do this? I mean, maybe she went overboard a bit, but did she really go this far? After all of this, she sat down, and patted her mom on the back, and hugged her.

* * *

Nadja woke up about an hour later to Puppeteer, settled down, hugged her. To her, that meant the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so, this is complete filler, but I wanted to write Puppeteer and she doesn't really relate to any of the other characters I wanted to write about, so I'm just gonna write this and leave it at that.


	5. Otis Césaire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Animan tries to help his family with their new powers

Otis was a very “live in the moment” kind of person. So when he was working at the zoo and just straight up turned into a panther, he tried to make the most of it. In fact, he was kind of happy about it, as he could communicate with the animals better, and he could still talk, so it wasn’t all bad.

But by the time he got home he realised that this was worse than he thought. Three of his daughters were essentially fighting each other, and Nora couldn’t even fit into the house.

“Nora!” called Otis, from the garden, looking up at the giant figure of Anansi crawling around the outside of the building.

“Dad? Is that you?” Anansi started, “Oh, boy, you wouldn’t believe what happened! I was in a boxing match, and I turned back into Anansi. That guy didn’t stand a chance!”

“What about Ella and Etta?” Nora suddenly started to look worried.

“Umm, yeah, about that…” At this Otis noticed that Nora was holding all of the doors and windows shut.

“Nora, let me in,”

“You see, there’s a bit of a problem…”

“Please, just open the door'' At this Anansi slowly moved her hand slowly off the front door of the house, and jumped behind the building as the door burst open, with loads of Sapotis rushing out. Anansi panicked at this, and grabbed them all in her giant arms, attempting to stop them from escaping.

However, even now, with three of his daughters mutated into monsters and the fourth probably became Lady Wifi again.

“Nora! Where’s Alya?” Animan called.

“She’s over with Nino”

Alright. So, Animan did not have a lot to work with.

“Ella! Etta!”

“NO DON’T PROVOKE THEM!”

Too late. The gigantic army of Sapotis jumped off of Anansi at hearing Otis’s words, and ran towards him.

“DADDY!”

“Kids!”

Anansi started panicking. It looked like all the monsters were going to crush him! But when she looked closer, she saw that her father was perfectly fine in the middle of the swarm. At first she thought he had transformed into a stronger, more durable animal and was keeping them away, but no, they had all ran up to him, and about a metre away, just stopped.

“So far, Nora, what have you tried in stopping them?” Otis asked her.

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through,” she began, “I tried hiding all the food in the house so they wouldn’t multiply, but that’s kinda hard when your mother’s a chef. Then I tried just keeping them in their room, but they started climbing out the window. And after that I just trapped them in the house and hoped you would have a solution”

“Did you try talking to them?”

“What?” Nora said, confused, “Why would that work? It wouldn’t have worked the first time the twins were akumatized.”

“This isn’t like the first time,” Otis explained, “This time Ella and Etta are still thinking clearly. Last time they were not. Now, which of you two are the originals?”

At this, two of the Sapotis stepped forward ahead of all the others.

“Good,” Otis continued, “The rest of you, break your hats.” At this, the massive herd of monsters broke the hats that they were wearing. Nora didn’t expect it to do anything, as on the news, they were saying how destroying the akumatized object didn’t do anything, but here, apparently that didn’t apply, as the Sapotis started vanishing.

“Phew, I was right,” Otis said, relieved, “I was thinking that since these are just clones, and that these hats aren’t the actual akumatized object, they shouldn’t repair themselves. I’m incredibly lucky I was right.”

Nora didn’t think it was luck. If that didn’t work, she was pretty sure her dad would have come up with something else to deal with the hundreds of Sapotis.

* * *

Later that night, Alya came home from Nino’s. Otis expected to have to comfort her, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that she was pretty ok.

“Hey, kiddo” he said, as she walked through the door.

“Dad? Is that you?” Alya said, surprised, “Oh no, oh no, oh no”

“So how was your day?” he asked, calmly.

“How was my… what?!”

“How was your day?” Alya looked surprised, but ultimately ended up just going with it.

“Well, it was fine, up until the point where I became this” she gestured to her outfit, “again. Nino seems pretty fine, but my class is just completely broken, and Miss Busier was having a panic attack, and Mr Damocles had to dismiss the class for her.”

“How’s Nino’s brother?”

“He’s fine. He seems to think that he should be responsible for making giant toys appear, which kind of surprised me, but I think he’s learned his lesson after he accidentally brought his action figure to life. Why do you ask?”

“Because today I came home to a giant spider and an army of gremlins fighting each other.”

“Army of gremlins… OH CRAP I FORGOT,” Alya started panicking and ran upstairs to find her sisters.

At the end of the day, Animan was someone who tries to make the most of a bad situation. And no matter how bad things get, like, giant spider, gremlin army, animal peron levels of bad, he still tries his best to do whatever he can to help his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this was originally just going to be a filler chapter, but I ended up really liking writing Césaire household, and just the dynamic of Otis being this wise father character, so it ended up being longer than I had intended. Anyway, enjoy!


	6. Nathalie Sancoeur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathalie hides as she transforms into Catalyst, evidence of who Hawk Moth was

Nathalie was outside Gabriel Agreste’s office, working on her tablet when the wave hit. She was originally unconcerned, probably just another Akuma, nothing to worry about, either Ladybug and Cat Noir won, and life goes on as normal, or the Akuma won, and Gabriel got his wish. But when the wave reached Agreste Mansion she knew something was wrong. Adrien’s bodyguard was outside in Mr Agreste’s car, and when he was hit with the beam, he broke through the roof of the car an emerged as Gorizilla.

Normally, something like this wouldn’t bother Nathalie, she was used to stuff like this. But then she remembered what HER Akuma was.

Catalyst

The Akuma who never left Hawk Moth’s lair.

If she was hit by the beam, everyone would know that she was an associate of Hawk Moth, and it wouldn’t take long for people to suspect Mr Agreste

So Nathalie had a choice. Either, one, she stayed here and hoped no one noticed that Catalyst was a friend of Hawk Moth. Two, she attempted to avoid the wave. Or three, she ran.

Nathalie chose three.

She went to her room and started to pack when the beam hit her and she transformed. She got nervous, but ultimately justified that this wasn’t a selfish thing to do. This wasn’t for her, this was for Gabriel. If they don’t find her, they don’t find him. She would just have to hide until the Akuma was defeated.

On her way out, she was about to leave when Gabriel’s office burst open and the Collector emerged.

“Nathalie! Stop!” He yelled, “In my office, now.”

“Mr Agreste, I have to go,” she replied, “If they find me here, then they’ll figure out you’re Hawk Moth…”

“So then they won’t find you here”

“What do you mean?”

“My lair. You may hide within it until Spirifyer is defeated”

“Spirifyer…” Nathalie let that sink in, “Wait, why can’t you just call back the Akuma.”

The Collector gestured to his chest. The brooch, his miraculous was gone, “Both of our Miraculous have been lost. Look, Catalyst doesn’t have the Peacock Miraculous, either. Without the Butterfly Miraculous, I can’t stop him.”

So Nathalie ended up hiding out in Hawk Moth’s lair. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but Gabriel tried to make it as inhabitable as possible, and down here, no one would find her. Mr Agreste came up with the excuse that Nathalie was abroad organizing the Agreste brand’s international trade, and that she may not be back for a while.

* * *

Later that night, when Adrien arrived home (not in the car, Gabriel had sent Gorizilla to literally carry him home) there was no trace of Nathalie Sancoeur, and as far as anyone was concerned, she was in New York.

No one thought that hundreds of meters under their feet, stood Catalyst, and even more evidence of who was REALLY responsible for that day’s tragedy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is essentially just getting Nathalie out of the way. She's evidence of who Hawk Moth is, and that's not really what I want this story to be about. She might appear again in a later chapter, but for now, I need her out of the way.


	7. Lila Rossi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lila begins her master plan

For most, turning back into a monster would be a horrible event. But not everyone would use these new abilities in a noble way. And for Lila Rossi, this transformation was a dream come true.

She had become Volpina again. It was great! All these morons around her were breaking down, either having a panic attack, or unable to use their new abilities. Not Lila. Lila was well experienced in being Volpina. See, only she and Hawk Moth knew it, but when Lila was akumatized, she wasn't being taken advantage of. She liked being akumatized. She _wanted_ to be akumatized.

So while everyone around her was freaking out, she created an illusion of the principal coming in to tell them that they could have the rest of the day off.

No one suspected a thing. Complete fools.

After this she thought about what she could do. In the end, she came up with a plan. It was both simple, and complex in the perfect way. First of all, she had to get the police away from the Eiffel Tower, and she knew just how.

* * *

Gigantitan was tearing up the city. It wasn’t really his fault, and the police realised this. They couldn’t just fight him. He was a baby, it’s not his fault he’s a giant. But they still had to neutralize him as a threat to the city.

And Lila knew this.

She had to get them away from the Eiffel Tower in phase one of her plan to take over Paris, starting with this.

“Perfect,” she said, looking down on Gigantitan.

She then used her power of illusion to create something she knew would attract his attention.

A giant lollipop.

At the other side of the city.

It was simple really. Creating the giant lollipop resulted in Gigantitan running to the other side of Paris, leaving the Eiffel Tower completely undefended as the police chased him, attempting to stop the giant baby from doing more damage than he already had.

Then, once the baby had reached the other side, she created another illusion. Signs at the bottom of the tower saying that it was unstable and to keep out.

Lila was nothing like the rest of Paris. Lila was smart. Lila was cunning. Lila knew what she was doing. And this was only step one of her master plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want Lila to be the main antagonist. Gabriel has lost all his powers and Spirifyer is more of an enabler to all these shenanigans than a compelling villain. This is just meant to be a short chapter to show that, during the rest of this, Lila will be plotting.


	8. Max Kanté

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamer helps Timebreaker with her problem with freezing people in time.

Max considered himself both lucky and unlucky.

One one hand, the Akuma he had been transformed into was basically just him, but with more technology and in a dumber outfit. Him turning back into Gamer wasn’t really a problem.

The problem was the Akuma now contained in his bag.

Max brought Markov with him in his bag basically everywhere. Markov wasn’t left on, because Max couldn’t afford that much in batteries, but he had promised his friend that he could be active for at least an hour a day. But today, Markov was gone, and in his place was Robostus. And while he may still be Markov on the inside, Max knew that if he turned him on, all of the machines in Paris would come to life, causing even more chaos than there already was.

But for now, he shouldn’t worry about that. For now, he should worry about getting his giant mech off of Kim, who appeared to be suffocating.

“MAX… HELP… MOVE… ROBOT…” he was yelling from underneath the machine. Max could hear Chloé mocking Kim from outside as he looked for the robot’s controls, and was very happy to find that it was identical to the controller for  _ Ultimate Mecha Fight III _ . He used this to remove the giant robot off of Kim.

“Thanks… Max…” Dark Cupid heaved, “Wait, I need to go look for someone, I’ll talk to you later.” Max thought to call him back, but then he remembered that Kim too was suffering from being turned into an Akuma, and it was probably fair to expect he had his own problems to deal with.

After a minute or two of fiddling with it, Max managed to get the robot's cockpit window open and got out to find that most of the class had already left, with the only people still there being Timebreaker, who refused to move from the middle of the room, and Evillustator, who was trying to help her.

“Don’t come near me!” she yelled at him, “Seriously, if I do so much as touch you, I’ll  _ kill _ you. Just STAY AWAY.” But Nathaniel wouldn’t just leave her there.

“What are you planning to do about it?” He said, “You can’t just stay there for the rest of your life!”

Neither of them noticed that Max was there, both of them seem to have thought he had already left, and Max did think about sneaking out without them, but then he had second thoughts. Alix needed help, and he thought he may have a solution.

“Alix!” He called, from the other side of the room, “I don’t know if it’ll work, but, I think I may have something that can help you.”

* * *

Max was initially just going to leave the mech in the school on account of not wanting to accidentally destroy the building trying fly out of it, but Nathaniel brought up the point that if he left it here now, the teachers may not have been too happy, so he attempted to pilot it out of the building. He did crash into one wall, but considering that the school was still standing, Max thought he did a good job.

He, Alix, Nathaniel and (Unbeknownst to Alix and Nathaniel) Markov flew to his house, and he had to admit, it was pretty cool. It would probably have been more magical if the city didn’t appear to be under siege from several different Akumas at once, but at least they got home without being attacked.

“So, where do you live?” Alix asked.

“There,” Max said, as he pointed out of the cockpit window toward a small building near the Dupain-Cheng Bakery. Max wasn’t completely certain where he should land, so he just parked his giant robot next to the street where a car would park. It didn’t fit perfectly, but something told him the police would be too preoccupied with the mass outbreak of Akumas to worry about giving him a parking ticket.

“Mom, I’m home!” Max called as he went through the door, “I have a few friends with me…”

“Oh, Max..” The three of them looked up to see Startrain walking down the stairs. She didn’t have the whole train attached to her, but instead she just looked like an assortment of cyan blocks.

“I was so worried…” She said as she swept him into a hug, “How are you?”

“I’m fine, mom, really, but I really need to get to my room, Alix here,” he gestured at Timebreaker, “Need one of my devices.”

“Oh, of course, I’ll leave you to it then.” Claudie said as she left the room, walking through a door into the kitchen, “I’ll make you some lunch then?”

“That would be great, thanks” As Claudie left the room, Nathaniel and Alix looked at Max, confused.

“Max,” Alix began, “When you said devices…”

“You’ll see,” He replied.

* * *

“Oh boy…”

  
  


When they heard the word devices, they weren’t expecting something as extreme as this. Max’s room was an incredible spectacle. He had a small desk in the corner, overflowing with papers and random trinkets, with a small bed next to that. The rest of the room was taken up by all sorts of strange gadgets and machines. There was a small, metal rocket in the corner. In the centre of the room there was a large mechanical arm, and there was a full wall that was just dedicated to scrap metal. It was so bizarre, yet beautiful.

“So,” Max said, holding up one of the trinkets, “Look at this.”

He was holding a gauntlet, about the size of a human’s hand and looking about as metallic as everything else in the room.

“What is it?” Nathaniel asked.

“It’s something I’ve been working on recently,” Max replied, “They’re gloves designed to absorb shock energy when punching. The idea is that you could punch a wall incredibly hard and not 

damage your hand.”

“What’s the use in that?” Alix asked.

“I don’t really know,” Max answered, “I just like building things, and this seemed like an interesting idea. But I wonder, if these are able to absorb shock energy, then would they be able to absorb Alix’s time energy? Go ahead, try them on.” At this, Alix took the gauntlets at wore them.

“It doesn’t feel any different.”

“Maybe we should try them,” Nathaniel asked, “It doesn’t have to be on a real person!” He added, quickly, seeing their shocked faces, “I can draw a cartoon character into existence and we can test them on that.” He began to draw a small stick figure on the tablet on his arm. As he drew, the figure appeared in the room in front of them. “Go ahead. Touch it.”

Alix hesitated slightly, before grabbing the stickman.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Nothing happened.

The stickman was fine. Not vanishing. Not frozen. Still fine. The gauntlets had worked.

“YES!” Alix exclaimed, “So, I can keep these, right?”

“Sure.” Max answered, “I don’t really have a use for half of the stuff in here.”

“Speaking of this stuff,” Nathaniel said, “Where’s Markov?”

“Yeah,” Alix began, “I would’ve liked to see him before we go. I should probably check on Jalil.”

“Umm, about that…” Max took Markov, no longer cyan and white, having turned red and black. “I can’t turn him on. If I do, every machine in Paris will come to life, and there’s enough chaos in the city right now as is.” Alix and Nathaniel both looked crestfallen at this, but understood. “But don’t worry,” Max continued, “I should be able to build him a new body.”

“Really?” Alix said.

“Yeah, after all, it’s not Markov himself that brings machines to life, it’s just the Robostus body. So if I can build him again from scratch, I can upload his AI into the new robot. It might take a while, though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So eventually, I'll be able to bring in Markov as well. What I want here is to show every Akuma getting over whatever problems they're having one by one. Also, I'd love to hear who you'd like me to do next.


	9. XY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> XY was not a smart person. XY was not a strong person. But XY did know who to follow.

All of Paris was in chaos. Akumas were everywhere. Half the city had turned into super-powered monsters. Bob Roth was still missing and the whole natation was in a panic looking for him, but he had disappeared. No one could find him.

But XY could.

XY knew exactly where his father was.

You see, several years ago, Bob Roth bought a small island, in the middle of the Mediterranian Sea. It was bought by a fake bank account that no longer exists and was purchased as somewhere Bob could escape to if the law should ever catch up to him. XY was willing to bet money that that was where his father was.

And XY would have told this to the authorities. Of course he would. There was one problem.

The fox girl who had just appeared at his window told him not to.

XY was not a very capable person. He was essentially just the face of his father's brand, and without his father there to guide him, XY needed someone new to follow. Lucky for him, Volpina seemed like just that.

She talked, he listened. A plan. One that resulted in the two of them ruling Paris completely. No one to stop them. All he had to do was keep his little bit of information to himself, and just to make sure that he didn’t tell anyone, he would stay in the Eiffel Tower for the time being.

And XY obliged. Because XY was not a smart person. XY was not a strong person. But XY did know who to follow. And at the moment, which side was more compelling? The citizens of Paris, who were in chaos trying to do the simplest of things? Or the smart fox girl, with a plan to make them both rulers of Paris? To XY, it was clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a short chapter to show Lila and XY starting to work together and establishing XY's character. Again, I really want to hear suggestions for who to do next.


	10. Tomoe Tsurugi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ikari Gozen contemplates what's best for her daughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ironchef13  
> Did you see my comment regarding kagami and her mother a few chapters ago?
> 
> Yes I did

Tomoe Tsurugi was seen by most as an overly-strict parent to the likes of Gabriel Agreste, and if you looked into her car as the wave crossed over Paris, you would probably agree.

“Please mother, I beg of you,” Kagami began, “Please, Adrien and Marinette are allowed to go to school, why can’t I?”

“I have explained to you before, Kagami,” her mother stated, coldly, “If you begin interacting with school, then you will be taking time out of your lessons in fencing and other more refined arts. What do you have to gain from going to school that I cannot teach you?”

“I just wanted to make more… friends…” Kagami said, miserably, looking out the window. Tomoe sighed.

“I have allowed you to see both Adrien Agreste and Marinette Dupain-Cheng.You have friends, do you not? Why would you need more?” Kagami opened her mouth to reply, but she never got the chance, as at that moment, the wave of energy passed over the car, engulfing it in purple.

* * *

A few moments later, Kagami woke up in a small, red room, sitting on the same car seat. Only something was different, and without checking, Kagami knew what it was. She had had nightmares about Riposte before, but the real thing wasn’t nearly as bad. She supposed her mind had exaggerated how bad it would be in those nightmares. She feared she knew exactly where she was, but she had to be sure.

“Mother!” She called.

“Kagami?” her mother’s voice responded, “Where are you?”

Oh no, Kagami thought, It’s her

“Mother, I’m… inside you. You’re Ikari Gozen again.”

Kagami hated this. Of how many times she had thought back to Riposte fearfully, Ikari Gozen was even worse, and the reality was even worse than her nightmares.

Tomoe on the other hand was incredibly happy. She had awoken standing in the street, with her bokken in hand, just standing there, she could see almost all of Paris.

“Mother!” Kagami called, “Mother, you must let me out!”

  
  


“I wonder....” Ikar Gozen began. “You know, I have criticized Gabriel Agreste in the past for not paying enough attention to his son, and I am only now realising that I have done the same.”

“Mother, what do you mean?” Riposte said, nervously.

“Even with all my precautions and protection, you still managed to escape to this school. You still managed to befriend the common bakery girl, Marinette. If I had been more observant, that would not have happened. I am saying that perhaps, I should not release you.”

“NO, MOTHER, YOU CAN’T” Kagami was full-on panicking now, banging on the walls of the car.

“Why not?” Tomoe reasoned, “With you here permanently I can keep an eye of your forever. You can of course come out sometimes, but you will primarily stay within me.”

At this, Tomoe fully realised the potential of what she had become. She was free to do anything. She could gallop across buildings, she was half the size of the Eiffel Tower itself. She could do anything! Kagami continued to panic, call out to her mother, but Ikari Gozen hardly noticed. She galloped around the city, able to do whatever she wanted. No longer was she bound by her mortal human body.

* * *

An hour later, Ikari Gozen had scaled the Eiffel Tower and was sitting atop it, looking down over the city. She could see all of the parisians going about their day to day lives. She watched in wonder, seeing Gigantitan roaming around… free… although, he was destroying quite a lot… maybe freedom shouldn’t be given to children his age…

But that didn’t matter! She could even see the son of the prestigious Gabriel Agreste. He was being carried home by his bodyguard, the large gorilla… well, maybe carried wasn’t the right word, he was more so being grabbed… actually, that looked quite painful…

On second thoughts, maybe this Ikari Gozen idea wasn’t the best. She could still hear her daughter’s muffled screams from inside the car… oh, goodness, did  _ she _ do this, what kind of a mother was she?

“Kagami!”

There was no response.

“Kagami! I apologise, I was wrong, you should not have to stay in the car forever. I shall free you.” At this, Ikari Gozen shot Riposte out of her mouth and into her hand. Only now looking at her did she realise how much damage she had really done. Kagami looked weak, there was no other word for it. She had passed out and looked incredibly drained.

Ikari Gozen was about to wake her when she noticed a small glint of light out of the corner of her eye. She turned around to see a giant meteor, headed straight for the Eiffel Tower.

Tomoe did not believe this to be possible, but then she remembered all the Akumas below her in Paris. Could this be one of their powers? At that moment, it did not matter to her, her only concern was getting Kagami as far away as possible.

Ikari Gozen galloped across the whole of Paris in less than a minute, and by the time Kagami woke, the Eiffel Tower was nothing more than a spec in the distance.

“Mother... “ she said, weakly, “You… you released me…”

“Kagami, I have reconsidered my decision not to let you go to school.”

“Mother thank you!” Kagami said, as she hugged Ikari Gozen.

* * *

There was a mild inconvenience that XY was complaining about. Something about a large horse-lady sitting on the tower. It took less than a minute to deal with. XY did start to complain that he wouldn’t live under these conditions, but it only took an illusion of a banquet table to convince him otherwise. Lila was good at manipulating people, it’s how she ensured she always won. And Lila Rossi  **_always_ ** won.


	11. André

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> André attempted to escape the flurry of ice cream threatening to turn him into Glaciator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luppa (yellowrabbit)  
> I wanna see how André would react to being called covered in the same ice cream he would serve people
> 
> Here you go

André only vaguely remembered Glaciator, but he knew it was an experience he never wanted to have again. All he remembered was being incredibly cold, but he had assumed that this must have been the result of the ice cream.

When the wave hit, André was just going about his day to day life as usual. But when a giant wave of energy appeared out of nowhere and started turning people into Akumas, he knew he had to do something. André was always a very noble man, and was willing to put his life on the line for others, so when the small baby a few metres away from him mutated into a giant, he gave his cart to a few bystanders who were standing nearby.

He saw the wave pass over Officer Roger, seeing him become Rogercop again, but as it neared him, and eventually engulfed him, nothing happened.

There was no purple energy. No giant ice cream man. No ice monster. Nothing.

And then he saw it. From the direction that he had sent his cart in, a giant flurry of ice cream was shooting through the air towards him.

He ran. André was never a very athletic person, but he reasoned that if he was in a building the ice cream probably wouldn’t know how to use a door.

“André?” said a really stupid sounding voice from the other side of the room. In his rush to escape the ice cream, he hadn’t been paying attention to which building he ran into. He was in the ice cream, and Frozer was on the other side of the room, looking crestfallen.

“Yes, Philippe?” André responded.

“How have you not become Glaciator again?” Frozer asked, but before André could anwer, there was the sound of a swarm of angry ice cream scoops banging on the door.

“Apparently I cannot become Glaciator unless I am engulfed in ice cream,” André answered. Seeming disappointed in this answer, Frozer went back to looking at the floor.

“What’s that?” André asked, looking over at Philippe. As response, Frozer held up his ice skates and André understood immediately. He remembered it was on the news the first time Frozer happened. By skating, Philippe would freeze all of Paris.

André was prepared to say something motivational, but before he got the change, the building began to shake.

“What…” André began. He was fairly certain that the flurry of ice cream scoops were not powerful enough to shake the building, but he soon got his answer as a giant, purple-gloved fist came crashing through the roof.

“LOLLIPOP!”

Whatever part of the building’s support system had been holding together was utterly destroyed by this and the whole thing began collapsing. At first, André was fairly certain that both of them had managed to escape, but when he looked over his shoulder, he saw that Frozer had been caught under some of the falling debris.

“Help! André!” he screamed, desperately as Gigantitan closed in. André knew if he didn’t run now, the ice cream hoard would catch up with him, but he couldn’t just leave Philippe there. At the end of the day, André valued others above himself, and he continued to hold this value as he stepped out of the ice rink door.

* * *

André always remembers the next part in a blur.

The second he stepped out the door the ice cream engulfed him and he became Glaciator again, but instead of running, he moved back to the ice rink. And while André was no match for Giigantitan, Glaciator was a different story, allowing him to save Frozer and escape the ice rink. If Philippe can give his passion for the good of the city, André can become an ice cream monster to help the people of Paris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, I'll make no secret of it, I don't like Frozer, and there was no way I could get a full chapter out of just him, so I kind of combined Frozer and Glaciator into one episode so I didn't have to do Frozer separately. I also fully believe that André's full priority would be helping people during Spirifyer, and my main evidence for this is that in Feast, he stops to try and protect Master Fu from the sentimonster, and I always picture André as someone who helps people no matter what, and that's what I wrote this chapter based around.


	12. Kim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim didn't mind being Dark Cupid, but there was one person who he was extremely worried about

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally going to skip this chapter and just have Kim explain it later on, but then I realise, I can't help myself, I love writing, so you get to read this now.

After the wave hit, Kim was crushed by Gamer’s robot, but after he was freed, he was only thinking of one thing. He didn’t really mind being Dark Cupid again, if anything, it meant he could get around Paris faster, and at the moment, that was vital.

That day, she had been off school sick, and Kim was really worried. If she was at home on her own, there would be no one to help her when she became her Akuma again.

Kim was almost there. Using his wings, he can get around the whole city in mere minutes, and if he hadn’t been so concerned, he probably would have thought it was amazing, but for now, there was not time for that.

Looking down, he did have the brief thought that he didn’t know exactly how to land, but honestly, it wasn’t too important to him. For all he cared, he could crash, and it still wouldn’t stop him, he just had to get to her in time.

At her home, he burst through the door and called her name.

“ONDINE!!!”

He ran upstairs and looked into her bedroom. There, lying there, looking weak and drained, was Syren. Her normally vibrant skin was borderline grey from spending so long out of the water, and she looked on the verge of death.

“Kim…” she wheezed, weakly.

“Ondine, no, don’t speak, you’ll waste your energy, I can still save you.” At this he picked her up and was about to carry her down the stairs, but there was no time, so he opened her window and jumped out, gliding through the air towards the pool.

Ondine’s breathing became faster and Kim’s flying became more urgent, and by the time he reached the pool, he didn’t even bother with the door. He smashed the glass roof of the building and dived inside, plunging Syren into the water.

The effect was immediate, her grey skin became bright purple and she went from breathing pathetically to desperately gasping for water.

Kim broke down from relief, passing out in the middle of the pool. Ondine guessed that he was probably exhausted from saving her, so she should let him rest.

She swam toward him and lifted him up onto the side of the pool.

“Thank you, my prince,” she said, pressing a kiss against his cheek.


	13. Ladybug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ladybug and Cat Noir attempt to track down Spirifyer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Ladybug and Cat Noir were doing during all of this.

As soon as the wave hit, Marinette ran from the classroom to transform into Ladybug. She was already on the rooftops when she was joined by Cat Noir.

“Hey, bugaboo!” he said to her, “So, who’s turned everybody into akumas?”

“That looks like we’re looking for an akuma named Spirifyer,” she said, looking through her yo-yo phone, “Here, look.” She showed him the screen of her yo-yo, showing footage of the akuma. He had purple skin, sunglasses and golden staff, and he was very tall. The akuma began walking towards a law firm and broke through the door. They could hear him yelling “You!” to someone inside, and they could see him wrecking the room he was in through the window. After that, he pointed his staff into the air and shot a beam out of it, which went through the roof. The beam grew larger as it got higher, eventually growing into a sphere, and then it exploded. At this point it was huge, and began to engulf the city. Whoever was filming dropped whatever they were filming on whenever the beam hit them and the video ended there.

“Where did you find this footage?” Cat Noir asked her.

“Simon Grimault uploaded to the internet a few minutes ago.”

“Simon Grimault…”

“Yeah. That at the end where the camera fell was him turning into Simon Says. Which means until we stop Spirifyer….” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to. They both knew what was on the line.

“So, we should start looking,” he said, breaking the silence, optimistically, “The sooner we defeat him, the sooned Paris can go back to acting as normal. So where do we start?”

“We should probably check the Shark Law Firm, that’s our only lead at the moment.”

* * *

Outside the Shark Law firm was chaos. Simon Says was nearby, panicking about his new powers.

“Simon!” Ladybug called to him.

“Ladybug!” he called back, walking towards them, “Oh, Ladybug, it was awful, the akuma, there was nothing I could do…” He started hyperventilating.

“It’s ok,” she reassured him, “Did you see where the akuma came from.” Simon Says pointed to the law firm. “Thank you.” Cat Noir and her went towards the building and entered it.

“We should search for any clue for who the akuma is,” Cat Noir stated, as they walked into the room.

“C… Cat Noir?” they heard a small, scared voice say. Ladybug and Cat Noir stopped walking.

“Hello?” Ladybug called.

“I’m in here!” The voice was coming from the other room, one with a chair set up against the door to stop it from opening from the other side. “It was Spirifyer, he locked me in here!” Ladybug and Cat Noir moved the chair away from the door and freed the man on the other side.

“Bob Shark, is it?” Cat Noir began, “What happened?”   
  


“Mr Roth,” Shark explained, “He’s been coming here for months, looking to sue Luka Couffaine for attacking him and his son. But he can’t, because Luka was akumatized when the event took place, and he got really mad and stormed out. A few minutes later, he came back as Spirifyer, and started tearing apart the room, and then he turned that man into an akuma,” he pointed at Simon Says through the window, “ and when I turned around, he was gone, and I was trapped.”

“Did he say where he was going?” Cat Noir persisted.

“No. He spoke about all of Paris suffering at the hands of akumas, but after that he left.”

“Thank you, sir.” Ladybug thanked, and turned to Cat Noir, “So, what do we know about Bob Roth?”

“Not much.” Cat Noir replied, “He owns a record label, he publishes music for Jagged Stone and XY… oh! XY is his son, and as far as I know, he’s staying at the Le Grand Paris. We could go and speak to him.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Ladybug said, grimly, “He wasn’t too cooperative last time, remember?”

* * *

But by the time they reached Le Grand Paris, it was too late.

XY was gone, and no one knew where. Ladybug and Cat Noir questioned Butler Jean, now Despair Bear, but still just as willing to do his job as ever, but as far as he knew, XY never left his room, but now he was gone. Vanished into the wind. Just like Spirifyer.

They were going to stay longer to keep looking, but an alarm went off on Cat Noir’s staff telling him that he had to be back at school before his bodyguard arrived to collect him (although, Ladybug didn’t know that’s what it meant) and he had to leave, and Ladybug reasoned that her parents would probably be worried about her.

* * *

That night, Marinette was in her room, watching the news on her computer. The only member of her family who had been reakumatized was her dad, and he didn’t have a beanstalk this time, so it wasn’t affecting them much.

The news wasn’t taken by Nadia Chamack, as she had been turned into Prime Queen, but it did report on Spirifyer. However, it also mentioned two disappearances. XY was the obvious one, Marinette already knew about it, but the second one was more worrying. Earlier that day, Mrs Rossi showed up at the police station, frantic and worried, saying that her daughter had not come home that night, and she had tried calling her, and had looked for her, but Lila was nowhere to be found.

And unknown to the residents of Paris, Lila and XY were both in the Eiffel Tower, plotting, and Bob Roth was on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to do Théo Barbot here, but he really has no motive to try to replace Cat Noir yet, so, I think I'll wait until I write him. I just wanted to say that because I've seen a few requests for Copycat, so don't worry, it's coming, just not yet.


	14. Chris Lahiffe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris feels guilty about summoning Santa Claus to Paris

Chris Lahiffe was not a baby.

No matter what people may say about him, Chris was smarter than most people would think. Sure he was no genius, but he knew his limits, and he was more than just a little kid.

So when he became Christmaster again, he barely batted an eye. He didn’t want to cause trouble the same way that August kid was. Chris was a good kid. Chris was responsible.

Sure there was an… accident… with his Grobotech Ultimate Destructor figure, but besides that, not much happened.

It wasn’t until he was going to sleep that night that Chris remembered his other power.

“Wait…” he said to Nino, as he was putting him to bed, “Last time, didn’t I manage to summon…” But he never finished that sentence, as at that moment, there was a knock at the door.

Bubbler went downstairs to check who was at the door and Christmaster followed. Hoped desperately that he was wrong, but he thought he knew who was there. But even he couldn’t predict the bizarre picture that awaited on his doorstep.

“Ho ho ho!”

Standing there, was a large, green-skinned man in a Santa outfit, with a sleigh parked nearby. Floating next to him on a purple pillow was a blue-skinned boy who looked about Chris’s age, with violet hair that stood on end. It was one of the strangest scenes Chris had ever seen, and bear in mind that Chris once saw a bird man attacking Paris with an army of Pigeons.

“Uh, hey, Santa-dude, what’re you doing here?” Bubbler began, “And who is this?” He pointed at the blue-skinned kid.

“Well, I was at the North Pole, overseeing the production of toys, as usual,” Santa Claws explained, “When I suddenly appeared in Paris again. Normally I only come here once a year, but not only was I back in the city, I was engulfed by a large energy wave and I became Santa Claws again. This young man is called…”

“Sandboy!” the boy said, “Call me Sandboy! It sounds cooler than my real name.”

“Ok then. Sandboy here helped me escape a bread monster who was complaining that traditional sleighs don’t fly, he has some fascinating abilities. Anyway, I don’t have anywhere to go at the moment, as my reindeer can’t escape the city.”

“Why can’t they?” Nino asked him.

Chris knew exactly why Santa Claws couldn’t escape the city. The first time Chris became Christmaster his powers had inexplicably summoned Santa from the North Pole as well, and Santa explained this to Bubbler.

“Well, for the time being, until Spirifyer is stopped, you can hang here for a while.” Nino proposed.

“Thank you Nino,” Santa asked, “But, if I may ask, who is Spirifyer?” After this, they showed Santa Claws the new report from that night, and after a while Sandboy left to go home. Mrs Lahiffe was fine with allowing Santa to stay in their spare room, and Santa Claws agreed to take care of his reindeer himself.

But Chris wasn’t satisfied. Chris still felt guilty for bringing Santa here in the first place. If it wasn’t for him, none of this would have happened.

“Santa….” Christmaster whispered, after Bubbler and his mother had left to go to get food.

“Yes Chris?” Santa asked.

“I’m… I’m sorry…” Chris answered.

“For what, Chris?”

“Because I… I brought you here…” Chris was tearing up at this point, “and.. if it wasn’t for me.. you wouldn’t be here… and Nino and mom... wouldn’t have to look after you…” Chris was full on crying now, “and… and… and it’s all my fault… I’m so sorry!”

“Oh, Chris,” Santa said softly, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t ask for these powers and you didn’t ask for me to be brought here, or to be transformed into Santa Claws. There there…” Chris looked at him, his eyes full of tears, and it was incredible how the green-skinned, black-eyed monster face could look so sincere. “And anyway, Ladybug and Cat Noir will catch Spirifyer, I will be sent home and all will go back to normal, no harm done. So don’t worry, Chris. All will be fine.”

And while Chris logically did not believe him, it only took one look into the akuma’s eyes to know that he was being sincere.

“Thank you.” Chris said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy I enjoyed writing this one. OK, so, first of all, I want to clarify that the wave only covered Paris, so foreign akumas don't apply, so if Santa Claus wasn't summoned to Paris, he wouldn't have become Santa Claws again. Other akumas that don't apply are Kung Food, because he's in China, Backwarder because she's in England and anyone from the New York Special. Also, I really like Sandboy, but we never really got much character from him, all we really got were some cool powers, so this is another case of there not being enough for a full chapter, but I still want to include them. Also, side note, I really love Chris and I hope we get more from him in the canon series.


	15. Simon Grimault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon shows Paris that his powers can be used for good.

Simon hated his chosen profession.

Not performing. Oh, no, Simon loved to act, to entertain, to make people happy. But being a hypnotist was something he regretted greatly. It wasn’t the money, he was making a decent amount, and it wasn’t the job itself, he still enjoyed it.

It was the way people reacted.

Oh, you're a  _ hypnotist _ . So you  _ manipulate _ people. So you can  _ get what you want _ .

And ever since Simon Says it has been worse than ever. So you’re  _ Simon Says _ . The who  _ hunted down Gabriel Agreste _ . The one who  _ almost threw him off a roof _ .

And it wasn’t Simon’s fault. He didn’t want to be Simon Says! He only wanted to be on  _ The Challenge _ . How was he responsible for Hawk Moth’s actions?

This was what he was thinking about when he walked past the Shark Law Firm. He had just left a business meeting for a TV show, where they wanted to make him the villain, so he declined. He didn’t want to give people more fuel to insult him with.

However, then he saw Bob Roth turn into Spirifyer and started filming it. Then the wave was created and Simon was hit.

A mere moment later Simon opened his eyes and before even looking, he knew what he had become. He was Simon Says again.

He instantly panicked, and threw his pack of cards to the ground. However, he kept accidentally creating more, so getting rid of them was not an option.

You may think things would get even worse after this, and you would be right. Simon’s panic began to cloud his judgement. He began to think that maybe he could rid himself of the cards by using them up, and so he started to throw them at bystanders.

“Simon Says, you will continue to exist!” he said, as he threw the cards, “Simon Says, you will go on with your day! Simon Says, you will ignore me for the remainder of the hour.”

At this point it was clear that he could not use all of the cards, they were duplicating far too quickly, and at this point Ladybug and Cat Noir had showed up and asked him for information.

After then went into the law firm, he decided he could be doing more productive things than throwing cards at people so he began walking further into the city.

* * *

BAD IDEA, BAD IDEA, BAD IDEA.

Simon was going to get ice cream to cheer himself up. Instead the ice cream man had turned into an ice cream monster and defended the ice rink from a 50 foot toddler who was now chasing Simon. It didn’t take long for him to realise why, as he noticed a giant lollipop in the sky, and he was just completely done with being confused and was just going with it.

Gigantitan chased Simon into an alleyway before stopping to grab at the lollipop. However, it didn’t take long for the baby to realise that it was a hologram of some sort and start throwing a giant temper tantrum. He was throwing cars everywhere and Simon couldn’t bear to see it.

So he left the alleyway and began walking toward the akuma.

“Hey, you! Get down!” one of the police officers yelled at him, but Simon wasn’t going to stop. Gigantitan grabbed him and held him, metres from his giant mouth.

“SIMON SAYS,” Simon Says said, “YOU WILL STOP THIS RAMPAGE.” Gigantitan froze. Then he sat down and stayed there. “Simon Says, you will listen to Officer Roger for the next 24 hours!”

For a moment, no one moved. Rogercop walked up to Simon. At first Simon thought he was going to be scolded for running into danger, but then Roger saluted him.

“Thanks to you,” he began, robotically, “Justice has prevailed in the streets of Paris.”

And from then on, Simon was respected to a degree, especially when his heroics appeared on the news that night. Roger ended up bringing Nathaniel Kurtzberg to draw a giant cage for Gigantitan. They ensured his mother it was only temporary, and that August would get a better place to live eventually. But looking around, all Simon could think was….

_ I did this. I helped these people. I’m not a selfish manipulator. I’m a hero. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more filler, but I needed a way to restrain Gigantitan, and this was the best way I could think of. Plus, I basically have free reign to do whatever I want with characters like this who don't really have their own character in the show, so I might use characters like this again in the future.


	16. Jagged Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jagged Stone and his music group are re-akumatized and they're having trouble dealing with it.

Jagged had been performing at a concert when the wave hit and it took him until the end of the song to realise that he had been attacking the audience, and the response was… less than positive. The concert ended early and several viewers had to be taken to the hospital, which Jagged felt extremely guilty about.

However, he felt even more guilty when he went backstage to find Fang had grown into a giant dragon and had crushed Troublemaker, and it took a few minutes to get him off her, as the room wasn’t large enough for the huge dragon and he ended up going through the roof, leaving Guitar Villain charged for property damage.

But the worst part of all was Vivica. She had been performing next to him and when the concert ended, three people were missing. It took them a few minutes to realise that Desperada had shot them with herb guitar and they were stuck in her guitar case. She had tried everything, breaking the case, prying off the pictures, even attempting to wash the pictures off, but nothing worked.

And to top it all off, the release of Jagged’s new album had been cancelled because Bob couldn’t be found, which in the grand scheme of things wasn’t all that important, but still, most of his fans weren’t happy.

Fang just barely fit in the hotel room, and considering that they had to fit three more people and a ton of music equipment, it was a tight fit. Vivica wouldn’t speak because she felt guilty, and stayed in the corner of the room all night, working at the guitar case.

Troublemaker began to click her pen due to stress, but when she clicked it, she began to fall through the floor, and she was very lucky she managed to click it again to stop her from falling.

Jagged Stone himself was just stressed. He had a small troop of musicians who had no idea what he should be doing, and the next day was the same. They stayed in the hotel room all day and had pizza delivered to them, and by the next evening, the hotel room looked like a disaster area.

There were pizza slices and boxes lying on the floor, instruments strewn around the room, a massive section that had basically been destroyed by Fang and Desperada had locked herself in the bathroom, still working with the guitar case. Put simply, they were a mess.

At midnight that night, there was a knock at the door. Desperada couldn’t sleep, so she went to open it, and she was shocked at who was standing there.

“Jagged!” she called.

“What?” Guitar Villain responded, walking over to the door.

“I think you should see this.” she said, nervously. Jagged Stone looked through the door, and looked shocked.

“Oh no….” he started, freaking out, “No… no… no, not you, please not you…”

“Hello, Jagged!” Pixelator greeted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No thanks  
> maybe two chapters which are from Jagged's and Vincent's points of view respectively
> 
> I had been thinking of doing Jagged and Vincent for a while now, but I think your idea of having two separate chapters is better, so the next chapter's going to be Vincent Aza


	17. Vincent Aza

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vincent tries to help Jagged, Vivica and Penny with their new akuma powers.

Vincent hadn’t really minded when he became Pixelator again. His goggles doubled as a regular camera so he didn’t have to give up photography or anything like that. Plus, he thought he looked kind of cool.

His problem was with Jagged Stone. Vincent had been in the crowd when Guitar Villain transformed, as he went to every one of the concerts. Some regarded Vincent as nothing more than a crazed fan. Most wrote him off as nothing more than a weird stalker. But Vincent saw himself as neither of these things. After all, he was just a fan.

But he was a fan who cared more than he probably should about the wellbeing of his idol, so when he heard that Jagged was having trouble with him and his friends' new akumas, Vincent had to help. The problem was, he didn’t know how. He didn’t know the first thing about akumas, so he contacted someone who he knew did.

Vincent had a lot of experience with finding out things. He had a large bookcase in his room that he used to store information about Jagged, so maybe the “crazed fan” assessment wasn’t too far off, but how he got that knowledge was something else entirely. Pixelator was smarter than many would think. And so, he understood how the storage of information worked. He needed a huge fan of Ladybug and Cat Noir to help him with akumas. So he contacted the Ladyblogger.

At first, she seemed disinterested. Apparently, she was busy with something. However, when she heard who HE was and why he needed the information, she changed her tune. Apparently, she had been looking for information on where Spirifyer may be, and she told him that she would help him with Guitar Villain if he agreed to question Jagged about Bob Roth. Vincent agreed.

Getting into  _ Le Grand Paris _ was easy. Again, this may be further evidence to support the “weird stalker” conclusion, but he had once infiltrated an old ladies’ bingo night. This hotel was child's play in comparison.

The biggest problem for Vincent, was Jagged himself. Considering that their last interaction had ended in him trying to trap Jagged in a picture frame forever, he doubted Guitar Villain would be too happy to see him. But there was nothing Vincent could do. He knocked on the door.

As the door opened, he was met with Desperada, Jagged’s guitarist. From there, things went about as well as were to be expected.

“Jagged!” Desperada called.

“What?” Vincent heard Guitar Villain respond.

“I think you should see this,” she replied. Jagged’s head poked around the door.

“Oh no…” he started, freaking out, “No…  no… no, not you, please not you…”

“Hello, Jagged!” Pixelator greeted. Guitar Villain looked shocked and began yelling.

“OUT!” he shouted at Vincent, “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Vincent replied, calmly.

“I’ll call security!”

“You do that,” Vincent smiled, and had a very smug look on his face, “but you and I both know that I’ll be back.” It was these last words that hit Jagged the hardest. He was right. He had never been able to get rid of Vincent before, why should now be any different? “So, can I come in?” Jagged gave in. Why not? Not even Pixelator could make things worse.

“Fine.” Guitar Villain said, reluctantly, “Just don’t… do anything.” 

Now, Vincent would like to think that he had gotten better at not fanboying completely when around his idol, but this was just too much. He was in  _ Jagged Stone’s hotel room _ , with  _ his secretary _ , his  _ guitarist _ and his  _ crocodile _ . This was amazing, and it took all of his self control not to start taking pictures.

“Why are you here?” Jagged asked, miserably, “And if you still just want a picture, then fine, you can have one, I don’t care anymore, just please leave whenever you’re done.” This was worse than he thought. In all his years, Jagged had never allowed him to so much as come  _ near _ him, and now he was so desperate, that a picture was ok? Vincent had a lot of work to do. He cleared his throat and began.

“I’m here because you’re having trouble with your new akuma powers” he started, “and I think I can help. I’ve been in contact with… an expert, on akumas, and she seems to know what to do. What’s been troubling you, and I can help. Just ask.” Guitar Villain looked at him for a moment, and then sighed.

“And what is it you’re wanting in return, huh?” he accused, “One of my guitars? More pictures? Oh, wait, let me guess… the same thing Pixelator wanted! To “immortalise” me in a picture frame. Is that it?” Vincent Aza was ashamed to admit it, but he REALLY wanted to say yes. All three of those things sounded amazing, but he convinced himself not to. He was here to help Jagged. None of those things would help.

“No cost,” he said, “All I want is to help my idol. That’s it. I have no secret agenda, or malicious intent of any sort. I am here, purely to help.” While Jagged didn’t believe him, he didn’t have any solutions of his own, so he reluctantly accepted.

“Alright then,” he began, “You can start with Vivica. There are three crowd members stuck in her guitar case, and every time she plays, she shoots dangerous energy that traps people. See what you can do.” Vincent walked over to Desperada.

“Can I see your guitar case?”

“Sure” She handed it to him, and once again, he was incredibly tempted to make off with it, but he stayed there. “I’ve tried everything. Breaking the case, washing the pictures off, prying the pictures off the case. None of it worked. Do you know what to do?” OK. Vincent had prepared for this. This was probably the stupidest part, but he had to to help Jagged.

“You need to kiss them,” he said. She looked at him like he was mad, so he elaborated, “My informant said that the only times someone has been freed from something inflicted by an akuma are when the akuma was defeated, which isn’t an option for us, or a kiss.” She still looked very confused, so he decided he would have to do it himself. He brought the case up to his mouth, and kissed the picture, and when he stopped, he wasn’t kissing a picture anymore, but a woman wearing Jagged Stone merchandise.

“What? Where am I?” she began, “Who are you people? How did I get here?”

“Calm down, miss.” Vincent told her, “Don’t worry. There was… an akuma. But keep calm, you’re safe now.” Desperada looked amazed that that worked, but she just accepted it, and kissed the other two pictures. Both of the pictures became people, and they were freed from the guitar case.

“Thank you!” she said to Vincent, “But, how do I make sure this doesn’t happen again? This happens every time I play.”

“Well, this applies to all of you,” he said, turning to Guitar Villain and Troublemaker, “but just use different equipment.” he pointed at Troublemaker “That pen is the only pen that will make you fall through the floor.” He pointed at Guitar Villain, “That guitar is the only guitar that shoots energy out of it when you use it,” he turned back to Vivica, “And just, don’t use equipment from that case, got it, miss?” She looked at him like he had saved her life and nodded.

“Umm, Vincent, we do have one other problem,” Guitar Villain said from the other side of the room, “This one is, less important, but, because Bob Roth is missing, I can’t release my new album. Can you help with that?”

“Ah, well I’m glad you asked,” Pixelator said, “Because my informant has been looking for Mr Roth, too. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions…”

And after that day, Jagged began to hate Vincent a little less, and Vincent was satisfied with just helping his idol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my new favourite chapter I've written. I really liked writing Vincent, possibly because I can kind of relate to being completely obsessed with something kinda stupid (*cough* this show *cough*). Also, I think I might write more of Jagged's troop in the future.


	18. Alya Césaire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alya tells Vincent how to help Jagged Stone.

Alya prided herself in being a great journalist. And by 12 o’clock the day after the wave hit, it was pretty clear that Ladybug and Cat Noir weren’t going to be able to track this guy down. The school had given them the rest of the week off, so Alya did what any reasonable person would.

She started trying to track him down herself. So far she hadn’t gotten very far, but she had only been working for a day. These things take time. She had a cork board on her wall that she was attaching evidence to.

Bob Roth was in the middle, with XY next to him, as both had inexplicably vanished last night. On the other side of Bob Roth was Jagged Stone, the only other person who really interacts with him. Above them were Hawk Moth and Mayura, who akumatized him into Spirifyer, and below Bob was Spirifyer himself. Next to Spirifyer was a close up of Bob’s gold necklace, as it’s his akumatized object. Near the edge of the cork board was the Shark Law Firm, with a picture of Mr Shark.

So, she did not have a lot to work with. However, there was one other thing she was debating putting on the board. Lila. Last night, only three people went missing, every other akuma was at least found, but not Volpina. And Lila was not someone to stay out of the spotlight. If anything, Alya would have thought she’d have been bragging about her new illusion powers, so why would she have stopped now? It just didn’t make sense.

Alya also had a list on her computer of all the akumas and their powers, and anything notable about them at the time being. Volpina and Spirifyer were missing, Desperada had accidentally captured three people and Gigantitan was being held by the police for the time being.

Alya stuck Lila’s picture onto the edge of the board and put a question mark through her and took a picture of the board, uploading it to the Ladyblog, with the caption “If anybody has information, let me know”.

Just then, she got a call.

“Hello,” she answered.

“This is the Ladyblogger, is it not?” asked the voice on the other end. Alya became tense.

“Yes, uh, who is this?”

“I’m… Jagged stone’s number one fan.” She immediately stopped worrying.

“Oh, Pixelator.” she heard him curse on the other end, “So, what can I do for you?”

“I need information on akumas.”

“Would the akuma in question be Guitar Villain?”

“Maybe. Look it doesn’t matter, I just need help.”

“With what?”

“I’m Jagged’s number one fan and he’s having some trouble right now with him and his associates becoming akumas. I need information to help him.” Alya was going to just tell him it, but then she looked at her cork board. She needed someone to talk to Jagged Stone, he needed information, they would work with this.

“OK, but you can’t get it for free. I need someone to interview Jagged Stone for me. Can you do that?”   
  
“Yes, yes, of course, whatever you need to know, I just want information.”

“OK, so Guitar Villain, real name Jagged Stone, able to cause shock waves with his guitar and make people head bang, his akumatized object is a guitar. Troublemaker, real name Penny Rolling, able to phase through things by clicking her pen, her akumatized object is a pen. Desperada…”

“I already know about Desperada”

“OK, then there’s his crocodile, Fang, who becomes a giant dragon.”

“I have some more specific questions I would like to ask. First of all, how would you free someone from Desperada’s guitar case?”

“Umm, I don’t know. I could run you through some theories?”   
  


“Ok.”

“So, effects caused by other akumas are normally ended when the akuma is defeated, things like Frightengale’s rhyming curse, Style Queen turning people to gold, Befana’s fairies, ect. But there are some exceptions, one of them is, well, you.”   
  


“Me?”

“Yeah, your goggles have a button on the side of them that free people from your pictures. Other exceptions are Despair Bear, who frees people from his control when the bear he pilots moves away from them, and Dark Cupid, who’s effects can be ended after a kiss. Of all of these, I would try the last one, it seems the most likely to work, considering what Ladybug said her logic was when I interviewed her.”

“What was the logic.”

“She said that “love always triumphs over evil” and that a kiss was the best she could think of, and all of the akumas are pretty evil, right?” Pixelator was slightly offended

“Hey! I’m and akuma!”

“So am I, anyway, is that all the information you need?”

“No actually, I need to know how they can still use their equipment without activating their powers”

“Oh, that’s easy, just use different equipment. That guitar is the only guitar that will cause shockwaves. They just need new equipment. Is that it?”   
  


“Yes, thank you.”

“Ok, I’m sending you a list of questions I need you to ask Jagged Stone, ok?”

“Alright.” At that moment, Alya heard Otis calling from downstairs.

“Alya!” he called, “Dinner’s ready!”

“Coming!” she called back, “Ok, Pixelator….”

“Call me Vincent,” he said.

“Vincent, I need to go, call me when you’ve had that interview.”   
  


“Ok, miss, goodbye.”   
  


“Bye.”

Alya hung up and walked toward her door, covering her cork board with a blanket before she left, but before she could open it, it opened itself and Anansi stood there, looking suspicious.

“Who were you talking to?” Anansi questioned her.

“Nobody.” Alya said, unconvincingly, “It was just… Nino!” Nora didn’t look convinced.

“Ok,” she said, “And who is Vincent?”

“Vincent?” Oh no. How much had she heard? “Vincent is…. Adrien’s photographer. We were talking about when we could hang out again, but Adrien has a photo shoot.” Nora stuck her head into Alya’s room and Lady Wifi was incredibly thankful that she covered the cork board before she left.

“I know you're up to something,” Anansi said back.

“Whatever, there’s nothing you can prove,” Alya replied, as she began walking down the stairs.

She didn’t want her sister to know what she was doing, as Nora could be overprotective at times. But Alya was going to continue, and that call from Vincent was just the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is what Alya would do if something like this happened, and I'm pretty sure Anansi wouldn't be happy. Also, I can see her and Vincent working together to an extent in a mutually beneficial relationship like this.


	19. Théo Barbot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several people go to Théo Barbot's workshop, all with their own agenda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keyseeker  
> I'm wondering about Theo. It's gotta be awkward having everyone think you're Chat Noir.
> 
> Luppa (yellowrabbit)  
> Copycat and Gladiator please.
> 
> I've finally done Copycat, yep I've seen the requests.

Alya had been waiting for a call back from Vincent for a full day now, and she was beginning to get impatient when her phone finally began to ring.

“At last,” she said to herself. Before answering, she checked outside her bedroom door to make sure Nora wasn’t there. She wasn't, which was lucky, so Alya answered the phone.

“Hello, miss.” Vincent’s voice said.

“Hi, Vincent,” Alya responded, “So, how’d it go with Jagged Stone?”

“It went great, thanks, I managed to fix most of the issues he and his troop were having with their new akuma forms, and I got the information you wanted.”

“Good, can I hear the answers?”   
  


“Ok, so the first question, “When did you last see Bob Roth?” he answered that it was a few days before he disappeared, they were discussing his new album. Nothing suspicious, just business.” Alya figured, as Bob himself wasn’t the one who disappeared, it was Spirifyer, “Second question, “Where do you think he is?”, Jagged said he had no idea.” Again, makes sense. “When asked why he would have any reason to leave Paris, Jagged said that Bob Roth had been doing some illegal stuff for a while, so he could be running from the law.” Something else Alya probably could have guessed herself. “When asked about XY, he just started insulting him, and I completely agree,” Alya rolled her eyes, “But the last question was the one that got the most information out of him. When asked “Who else has Bob Roth been in contact with recently” Jagged answered that he had been talking to XY’s technician,  Théo Barbot.”

* * *

So, the heroes finally had the idea to question Jagged Stone. Ladybug and Cat Noir had asked him about Bob Roth only a few hours after Vincent had left, and she had been watching the two heroes for a while now to make sure they didn’t get too close to the truth. However, now they seemed to think Théo Barbot had the answers to where Bob Roth was, which was wrong, but now was as good a time as ever to get rid of those nuisances. Speaking of nuisances, XY was complaining more than ever, so she took the butler and a ton of food from  _ Le Grand Paris _ just to shut him up. It’s working for the time being, but if he asks for money one more time, she swears, she’ll personally throw him off the tower herself. Anyway, for now, she had to get to Théo Barbot’s workshop.

* * *

That night, Ladybug and Cat Noir went to Théo Barbot’s workshop to question him, but unbeknownst to them, they were followed by a manipulative fox girl, who just so happened to have tricked Théo Barbot into leaving his home to go down to city hall, and would not be back for a few more minutes. She had to work quickly.

Ladybug and Cat Noir knocked on the door, and after there was no answer, peered in through the windows, but after a while, ended up leaving. After they were out of sight, Lila pulled out a small, handheld grenade that she had gotten from the police station and threw it at the workshop.

There was a large explosion, destroying most of the workshop, and now all she needed was an illusion. Using her flue, she created an image in front of her to look like the building was still standing. Now all she had to do was wait for Théo.

After about five minutes of waiting, she saw Copycat walking towards the workshop, and as he did, she began to change the illusion. As he got closer, she added Cat Noir, standing next to the building, and by the time Théo had reached his home, Lila allowed the scene to play out as she wanted.

* * *

Théo was already unhappy as he approached his home. He had been called by Mayor Bourgeois to come down to city hall, only for him to be told that no such phone call had been made.

But as he approached his house, he noticed someone standing next to it, and as he got closer, he realised it was Cat Noir he was standing right next to his workshop before Cat Noir actually did anything.

“CATACLYSM!” he yelled, and ran towards the building. Copycat watched in shock as Cat Noir touched his studio. Théo was overrun with anger and hate and he felt his old dislike of the black cat returning. He watched, helpless, as his home was destroyed, and he dropped to his knees.

“I’ll kill him,” he whispered to himself, “I’LL KILL HIM!!”

* * *

The illusion had just the effect Lila wanted. Now, with Copycat hating Cat Noir, her job here was done. However, she didn’t notice Alya approaching the ruins of the workshop as she began making her way back to the Eiffel Tower. Luckily for her, Lady Wifi didn’t notice her either as she approached Théo Barbot.

“What happened here?” she said.

“Cat Noir…” Copycat replied, “He was here... and he destroyed my workshop…” Alya was shocked.

“What? When?” she responded.

“Just a moment ago… I’m going to kill him…” At this point Alya was kind of scared.

“Whoa… calm down there, I have a solution.”   
  


“What’s that?”

“Well… if Spirifyer was stopped, then the Miraculous Cure would fix your workshop.” Théo stopped to think about this for a moment. “I’ve been trying to track down Bob Roth. Would you maybe answer a few questions for me?” Alya knew this wouldn’t work, but she had to try.

“No… not now. I’m going to find Cat Noir, and make him pay for what he’s done” Alya feared it would come to this, but he left her no choice.

She paused him.

  
This was the first time she had used her powers, and she felt guilty saying, it felt  _ good _ . She felt powerful. But she didn’t want to dwell on it, because she probably shouldn’t stay here with Théo Barbot’s paused body. She began to head home, slightly worried about what would become of Copycat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so, Copycat's going to come back later as a more significant antagonist, but for now, I'm just going to leave him here. Also, I did say that I wanted to wait to do Copycat because I needed to set something up, well, this was it.


	20. Vivica

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alya, Nino and Vincent attempt to collect information on Bob Roth's location by asking Luka, questioning Cat Noir about Théo Barbot's workshop and asking Le Grand Paris employees about Butler Jean's disappearance.

Things were getting worse, and Alya was running out of ideas. She had called over Nino to help her with her search for Spirifyer, and he was very confused. The news reported on the disappearance of Butler Jean from  _ Le Grand Paris _ , an event Alya had added to her cork board, and the destruction of Théo Barbot’s workshop, and his frozen body found outside. When Alya saw this, she panicked and unpaused him to avoid liability, and now one seemed to know what had become of him.

Alya and Nino were coming up with a plan on where to look next when Vincent called asking how things went with Théo Barbot, curious about what he heard on the news. After some protesting from Alya, he agreed to help them again, with Bubbler questioning Luka about Bob Roth, Lady Wifi going to Le Grand Paris to find out more about Butler Jean and Vincent seeing what he could find out about why Cat Noir would destroy Théo Barbot’s workshop.

* * *

Alya had questioned everyone at  _ Le Grand Paris _ to no avail. The doorman, her mother, the mayor, Jagged Stone, she even tried asking Antibug, no one knew where the butler had gone. Admittedly, several of them said that as he had been turned into a small teddy bear, he would be pretty easy to miss, but he was just… gone.

* * *

Nino quickly realised that getting answers out of Luka would be harder than he thought. Not because Luka was being uncooperative or anything, just because he was now Silencer, and Silencer couldn’t talk.

Nino ended up giving him a piece of paper to write on and he was told that Bob Roth was an abysmal human being, XY was equally as bad and he had never heard of Théo Barbot or Butler Jean before.

* * *

“NO!”

“Please, Jagged?” Vincent asked, “I helped you with your problem.”

“You said you didn’t want anything in return!” Guitar Villain replied.

“I didn’t! This isn’t for me, it’s for my informant!” Pixelator had a plan to lure out Cat Noir so he could ask about Théo Barbot’s workshop, but he needed help. He wanted to stage a fight between him and Jagged so that Ladybug and Cat Noir would come to stop them. Then, when they realised that the whole thing was staged, he could question Cat Noir. The problem was that Guitar Villain still didn’t like him all that much.

“Well, you can find someone else to help you with this, not me. Now please leave.” Vincent was normally more persistent, but he had learned from the first Pixelator that if he wanted his idol to like him, then constantly harassing him probably wasn’t a good idea. He was walking down the hotel’s corridor when he was stopped by Desperada.

“I’ll help you,” she said to him.

“You will?” he said.

“Yeah, I mean, I owe you one for helping me with my guitar case.” He explained his plan to her. It was simple, they would fight for a bit outside the Louvre, when Ladybug and Cat Noir showed up, he would shoot her, and he would only release her when they agreed to answer his questions.

* * *

“Ok, so, do I just start playing?” Vivica asked. She was completely willing to help Vincent, but she hadn’t used her powers before.

“Yes,” Pixelator explained, “the way your powers work is that when you play, energy beams are shot from your instruments. You fire at me a few times, but don’t actually hit anyone, then when Ladybug and Cat Noir show up, I’ll temporarily trap you in a picture until they answer our questions.”

“Ok.” Desperada responded, somewhat nervously. They stood opposite each other, and she began to play.

The fight lasted about five minutes, with them both shooting energy at each other. A few civilians who were nearby started to run, but Desperada and Pixelator ignored them. After a few minutes of that, Ladybug and Cat Noir could be seen a few buildings away, but when Pixelator turned to shoot Desperada, he was too late, as one of the yellow energy bolts hit him and he became trapped in Desperada’s guitar case.

“LADYBUG! CAT NOIR!” she called and they approached.

“Stand down, Desperada!” Ladybug said.

“No, wait, you don’t understand…” Ladybug swung her yo-yo at her, “No, STOP!”

But they wouldn’t stop, so Desperada had no choice. She shot them both with her trumpets.

“This was a bad idea,” she said to herself, as she left to go to the one place they wouldn’t be interrupted.

* * *

Once safely in Vincent Aza’s room, Desperada quickly kissed the Cat Noir picture of her guitar case, and he appeared in front of her. He tried to attack, but this time she was ready, and took his stick and pointed her trumpet at him.

“Don’t move!” she told him, “I don’t want to hurt anyone, I just need information. I’m sorry about all the ruckus but it was the only way we could think of to get you here. What do you know about Théo Barbot?” Cat Noir looked taken aback by this, but he answered anyway.

“Umm, let me think,” he said, “He sculpted a statue of Ladybug and I, he had a crush on Ladybug before I shot down all his hopes and dreams, and then he became Copycat and tried to kill us. He worked for XY as a technical expert, and last night we went to question him, but he wasn’t there.”

“So you admit that you were at his workshop last night?”   
  


“Yeah, me and Ladybug. Why wouldn’t I?”   
  
“Because he seems to blame you for its destruction.” Cat Noir looked confused.

“Why does he blame me? I never even spoke to him yesterday, as I said, he wasn’t home.”   
  


“I don’t know, but he told Vincent’s informant that you used your Cataclysm on it and that’s how it was destroyed.”

“Vincent… Pixelator? What do you and him have to do with any of this?”

“Nothing, just helping a friend. Anyway, more importantly, what do you know about Bob Roth?” Cat Noir just looked frustrated at this.

“Absolutely nothing. He disappeared and we haven’t heard from him since, but I assure you, we’re looking for him.”

“Do you know why Théo Barbot would have any reason to dislike you in any way?”

“Yes, as I said before, I accidentally akumatized him, but as far as I’m aware, he’s forgiven me.”

“What do you know about Butler Jean?”

“Umm… he turned into a plush bear that one time and tried to kill me? Besides that, nothing. Can me and m’lady go now?” Vivica had one more question, one she wanted to ask herself.

“What do you think of Vincent?” Cat Noir looked confused.

“What… I don’t know… I mean, I only ever met him as Pixelator…. sorry, but what does this have to do with anything.” Desperada blushed.

“Nothing… nothing… you can go, just, kiss this picture of Ladybug.” Cat Noir was still confused, but did as he was told, and a second later, Ladybug and Cat Noir were kissing in front of her, and she couldn’t resist taking a picture. After they left, all that remained was her, and the picture of Vincent. She felt somewhat guilty for trapping him in a guitar case just for a kiss, but there was nothing that could be done now. She held the case up to her mouth, and kissed it.

A moment later, she wasn’t kissing the guitar case anymore, but a very confused Pixelator, who, while baffled at what was happening, didn’t try to resist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I'm doing this now. I'm essentially using this fanfiction to whatever I feel like, so I guess this is a thing. To conclude, I'm an idiot, but I already knew that, so I'm just going to go with it.


	21. Félix Graham de Vanily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Félix plots to get back to Paris and steal the other Graham de Vanily Twin Ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just go with it.

Félix hadn’t succeeded. He only got one ring. And if he hadn’t succeeded, then Félix had lost. And Félix Graham de Vanily COULDN’T have lost.

He had done some research before his trip to Paris and found that it was  _ painfully _ obvious that Uncle Gabriel was Hawk Moth. I mean, he knew people could be dumb, but how were they THIS stupidly oblivious.

He formulated a plan. First, he would gain the trust of his naive cousin, Adrien, and steal his phone. Then, he would contact Adrien’s friend in order to make them mad, giving Uncle Gabriel a perfect victim for his akuma. With him distracted, Félix could search the house for the first ring, and by the time they were leaving, he would shake his uncle’s hand, taking the second ring from it. Easy.

But then those STUPID heroes got in the way. Could they not see he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself? Or did they just want to get in his way? Ok, so maybe he had gotten slightly angry at the end there, attempting to ally himself with a magical terrorist may have been going a bit far, but still, if they wouldn’t leave him alone, then desperate times call for desperate measures.

Ever since he had been waiting for an opportunity to get back to Paris, but things were trickier now. Gabriel knew he was after the second ring, so Félix had to strike at a time when both he would be weaker. Luckily, just such a scenario presented itself to him.

It was on the news worldwide, the tragedy of Spirifyer. There was some Chinese chef on TV last night, saying how he had been akumatized in the past, and that it was awful, and he felt terrible for those who were hit. Félix didn’t think it was terrible. They were still thinking for themselves, this wasn’t a hindrance for most of them, this was helpful. Félix felt terrible for those who hadn’t been hit who now had to put up with their superpowered friends and family.

This incident did, however, do something helpful, and it was that Gabriel was, at last, weak again. He could no longer become Hawk Moth, and his two main security measures, Gorilla and Nathalie, were both taken care of, with Gorilla unable to fit in the mansion and Nathalie was gone. But there was one problem. So was the ring.

So Félix had a very specific goal. He needed to break into Agreste Manor and kidnap Collector without being trapped in his book. He then had to locate and eliminate Spirifyer while keeping Collector trapped. Then he had to take the ring and leave without leaving any permanent damage, no evidence that he kidnapped Gabriel. Taking the ring was fine, they are rightfully property of the Graham de Vanily family, but forcefully kidnapping the Collector was another story.

But Félix could work that out later. For now, he just needed to get to Paris, preferable subtly, so Gabriel wouldn’t expect anything. His mother wouldn’t care, she was too busy with work to ever really notice Félix anyway, which served him just fine. Plus, his family was rich, so it wouldn’t be hard to just, take a train to Paris, and maybe rent a room in the city.

Félix looked online to find blueprints of Agreste Mansion, but they just….didn't exist. He couldn’t understand it. His only thought was that maybe Gabriel had them removed from the internet, as his Hawk Moth lair may be on them? But even then, wouldn’t it be easier to just have the lair removed from the blueprints entirely? Either way, he would have to visit Paris City Hall to find them.

For the time being, he would have to be careful not to be noticed in the city so that Gabriel won’t get suspicious. He would be able to take care of the rest whenever he got there….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I have a plan for this character, and the next few chapters may focus on him, but I do (kinda, sorta, not really) know what I'm doing (to an extent) with putting this here instead of following up on the Vivica chapter. Believe me, a follow up to it is coming, just be patient.


	22. Agreste's Documents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Félix had the perfect plan to steal Gabriel Agreste's documents from Hôtel de Ville.
> 
> In other news...
> 
> Lila had the perfect plan to steal Gabriel Agreste's documents from Hôtel de Ville.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't important or anything, but I wanted to point out that this is the first chapter not to be named after a character. Not important, I just thought I may as well point it out.

The next phase of the plan was to break into  _ Hôtel de Ville _ and it was about as difficult as breaking into everywhere else had been.

Walk in, create some illusions around her so she couldn’t be seen. Then she headed for the section where they kept the documents.

This phase of the plan involved breaking into the city’s documents and basically destroying everything relating to Gabriel Agreste. It was really simple, but it worked when you look at the big picture, so it was fine.

Everything was going fine as she approached the door. All the employees around her were completely oblivious to her presence (she had gotten really good with using her illusion powers). She waited for those around her to walk away before opening the door.

And the plan fell to pieces.

Standing there was a boy about her age, with blonde hair rummaging through one of the filing cabinets. This didn’t make sense, there wasn’t supposed to be anyone in here! And it was too late to go back, he’d already seen her.

“Who are you?” Lila whispered, furiously at Félix as she walked into the room. “What are you…?” He slapped his hand over her mouth.

“Shush!” Félix whispered, “You’re going to get the both of us caught.” Ok, so maybe the plan wasn’t completely destroyed. If he wasn’t supposed to be here either, then maybe she could bargain with him. She didn’t see him if he didn’t see her. The problem was that she couldn’t get a single word in, as he still wouldn’t let her talk. This was going to make everything more difficult, but she had to do something, otherwise the plan was in ruins.

“Ahh, here it is” he whispered, pocketing a small blue document. He was going to leave, and Volpina panicked. So she knocked him out with her flute.

She was initially going to just leave him there, but then he noticed what the boy had been looking through. Files for the Agreste family. She couldn’t question him now, and she didn’t feel safe leaving someone here who was also planning something regarding the Agreste family. She took the documents that she needed and took them, but she decided to take someone else as well. She could deal with him later….

* * *

Félix woke up in a small room. He looked around him, and saw a small purple plush bear, but as he attempted to stand up, he realised he was tied up.

“Ah, you have awoken?” the plush bear said, “Miss Rossi told me to inform her.” The bear walked toward the door, and exited the room, giving Félix a chance to check his pocket, and luckily, the blueprints were still there.

The door opened and the girl from city hall walked in. Before he could say anything, she started questioning him.

“Who are you?” she asked, “And what were you doing with the Agrestes’ files?” Ok, so she didn’t know who she was or what he wanted, so he could still get out of this.

“Why should I tell you anything?” She smirked at him.

“Do you really want to stay here permanently?” she said, with her smug smile. She was right, of course, but he was pretty sure he could escape here on his own, but he wanted the same information she did. What did she want with him? He needed to know whether this would cause problems with his plan.

“No,” he replied, “But I also don’t want you getting in my way. What do you want?”   
  
“I don’t think you’re in a position to make threats.”

“Not a threat. Just a question.” Lila stopped to think about this. The boy didn’t seem to provide an immediate threat, yet she had to take caution. He had infiltrated city hall, and he didn’t even have any powers. She shouldn’t underestimate him.

“Why should I tell  _ you _ anything?” she said, repeating his words. He shrugged.

“Fair enough.”

“Can you at least answer this? How did you get into city hall?” Félix thought for a moment, concluding that how he got in wouldn’t give anything away, so he told her.

“I looked online for maps of Hôtel de Ville and found where the security camera blind spots were. I then looked at which employees worked in which rooms and the likelihood of them moving around the building, plus who had and hadn’t been re-akumatized and would be either off from work, or empowered with strange abilities. Using this knowledge, it's simple.”

Lila was taken aback by this, as she had expected something simpler, but this gave her a thought. This boy, he thought the same way she did. Maybe he could help her.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Félix Graham de Vanily,” he answered, “And you?”

“Lila Rossi. And what was that document you took from the file cabinet?” Félix took out the blueprints.

“It’s the blueprints of the Agreste Mansion.” Lila could have kicked herself. Why did she not think of that? Her plan was to take the documents and destroy them, and since Nathalie wasn’t there to deal with it anymore, Gabriel would have to leave the house to sort it out. She hadn’t thought that maybe she should have studied a map of the building, maybe it even had the lair on it…

WAIT. She had the perfect question to ask him, to see if he was as smart as he claimed to be.

“Who is Hawk Moth?” she asked Félix.

“Why do you need to know?” he responded.

“Just answer the question.

“Fine. Gabriel Agreste.”

There. There was evidence. Félix was like her. Félix was smart. He may not be trustworthy, if she was anything to go by, but he would be more than a useful ally.

“I wish to infiltrate Agreste Mansion.” she explained, “I have reason to believe that Hawk Moth’s lair is somewhere within, and in the lair lies an akuma with the ability to empower people. Twice, he has attempted to use both I and her in plans to take over the city, and has failed both times. I believe that control of Paris should go to people smart enough to be worthy of it. People like you and I.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“I wish for you to help me. Whatever you want, I can get it for you, all I need is assistance in my scheme to kidnap the akuma somewhere in Agreste Manor. I believe it to be his secretary, Nathalie. You help me, we both rule the city, I can get you whatever you want.”

“Well, luckily for you, you won’t have to wait that long to return the favour. You see, I am the nephew of Gabriel Agreste, and I am after the Graham de Vanily Twin Rings. I have obtained one of them,” he gestured to his hand, “but after my aunt married Gabriel, he has had the other ever since. The problem is, that after he became the Collector, the ring is now gone, and if I kidnap him, he may be able to take legal action against me. He can’t, though, if he doesn’t know who kidnapped him. I need your illusion powers to help me.”

This did change things slightly. She was initially going to lure Gabriel out of the house instead of her usual illusion powers because Gabriel was a far more paranoid and cautious person than the ones she had faced thus far, but with Félix’s help, she could probably deal with him. Or…

She could charm Félix into helping her and whenever she got the akuma, she could abandon him.

Meanwhile, Félix was thinking something similar. He could help her get the akuma, have her kidnap Collector for him, and then double-cross her, defeat Spirifyer, and the akuma would be de-akumatized and Lila would all be left powerless.

“Ok,” Lila said to him, offering her hand.

“I look forward to working with you,” Félix said, shaking her hand.

That’s how they came to work together, shaking hands, unaware that neither could trust the other.

Both thinking they’re better than everyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two are going to be the main villains from this point forward. I don't really have much to add that I don't think the chapter already made clear, so I hope you enjoyed.


	23. The Cat In The Window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alya gets an unexpected visitor

Alya had completely run out of leads.

After the three of them had investigated, very little was discovered. Nino didn’t find out anything helpful and the only thing that they could understand from Vincent was “I made out with the hot musician chick” and they stopped pushing for answers after that.

Nino went to the Shark Law Firm to question Bob Shark, but he didn’t know anything that they didn’t already know.

Alya was looking at her cork board. There was nothing left that they hadn’t already looked into. What was she supposed to do?

She was just about to call it a night when she heard a tapping on her window, and when she went to open it, there was someone on the other side.

“Hello?” she said to Copycat, “What are you doing here?”   
  


“I don’t really know,” he replied, “I was going to go after Cat Noir, but I couldn’t bring myself to, and then I remembered that you wanted me to answer questions before I stormed off, so do you want answers now?”   
  


“Yes please!” she said, “Just let me get my notepad.”

She started rummaging around her drawer before eventually finding a small black notepad with a purple strap around it, and a green pen.

“Ok, question one, what do you think of Bob Roth?” He scoffed.

“What do I think of him? He’s an awful person, that’s what. Honestly, I have to listen to him constantly bragging about how well he ripped somebody off, or some other probably-illegal endeavour that he’s had the mayor sweep under the rug.”

“Is there anyone you know who wouldn’t like him?”

“Are you kidding? Jagged Stone, Clara Nightingale, Luka Couffaine, Anarka Couffaine, Penny Rolling, me, honestly, even his own son recently started complaining that he was mad his dad called him talentless that one time.” Alya wrote that down.

“Do you know any places Bob frequently visited?”

“Umm...  _ Le Grand Paris _ ? He never mentioned where he lived and we normally had our business appointments at  _ Le Grand Paris _ , so I don’t really know where else he would go.”

“Who do you know who would have reason to not like you?”

“Cat Noir,” Alya rolled her eyes, “Jagged Stone, he wasn’t happy that I worked for XY. Umm… I think that’s it.”

“Ok, final question, who else is Bob Roth close with?”

“Oh, quite a few people. Obviously, his son, XY, technically Jagged Stone but Jagged seems to hate him, so maybe not the best source of information. He talks about being close friends with the mayor a lot….”

“HEY!”

Copycat and Alya froze.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET OUT OF HERE!” Anansi was calling from a higher window. “DON’T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE!”

“I gotta go,”  Théo said, nervously, as he jumped down the building, breaking his fall with his baton.

“Wait!” Alya called.

“LIL’ SIS?” Nora yelled, “IS THAT YOU? IF SO, PUMMEL THAT GUY FOR ME!”

If anything, Nora’s yelling only made Copycat run faster. So, the interrogation wasn’t perfect, but she now had her next lead.

“André Bourgeois…” she said, adding him to the cork board.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically just a setup for the next Alya-centric chapter, which'll be either André Bourgeois or Chloé Bourgeois, I haven't decided yet.


	24. The Fox, The Conman, The Rapper And The Butler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lila, Félix, XY and Butler Jean work together.

Félix and Lila had both come to enjoy working together.

Every morning they sat down in one of the rooms with the blueprints that Lila had made a few copies of and began to brainstorm how to get into Agreste Mansion. Getting around the entire rest of the city was far easier, but the more they examined the map, the more paranoid they believed Gabriel Agreste was.

Initially they were just going to use a combination of illusions and attempt to take Sandboy’s pillow to float above the motion sensors, but then they remembered that they had to sneak past Gorizilla, so the less they brought with them, the better, and flying in on a pillow may be problematic. Then they examined Gorizillas powers even more and realised that he was able to track anything, so illusions wouldn’t trick him, he could still smell and hear them.

Then there was Collector himself, and he was a whole other can of worms. To begin with, they were just going to use something to get the book off of him without touching it, like a fan of some sort, but then they watched the footage of Ladybug and Cat Noir fighting the Collector, and it showed him using some kind of telekinesis to retrieve the book, so that would not be possible.

Because of these complications, the heist that was supposed to take place basically the next day had been delayed until they could find a work around to these issues, and both Lila and Félix were getting used to living here. Before Félix had arrived, Lila had used her illusion powers to get some basic items that they had needed, stuff like food, cooking equipment, a butler, beds and a computer.

Félix had to admit, he did really enjoy Lila’s company. He had never been much of a people person, always seeing them as, at best, a means to an end, and at worst, ignorant fools who were beneath him. But with Lila, she felt like an equal to him, someone who he could, kind of relate to.

Lila was in a similar situation. She had always wanted adoration from her peers, but when she never got it, resorted to manipulation. The thing was, she preferred manipulating people to being legitimate friends with them. Until Félix. Félix felt like someone who was on her same intellectual level, someone who she could have a conversation with without feeling frustrated.

Both were enjoying their time at the Eiffel Tower, plotting against a mutual enemy, interacting with one another, but there was one thing neither of them could stand.

“So… when I’m king, I’ll require at least half of Paris as my kingdom, maybe more…”

XY contributed nothing to the team. He would come into the room they were in while planning, and instead of helping, just pointed out all of the things he wanted whenever they won. The butler managed to shut him up for a while, as every time XY asked for something, the butler used his powers to possess XY into getting it himself, which was honestly pretty amusing, but at mealtimes they had to put up with him, and Lila and Félix had had a serious conversation about whether or not to throw him of the tower now and be done with it. After all, nobody but them knew about the information he had. The problem was that they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves being in the tower, and XY’s body found at the bottom may blow their cover.

The butler himself didn’t seem to mind working for them too much, but he did ask about Chloé Bourgeois sometimes, so Lila would check in on her frequently so as to keep him happy. If that was all it took to keep him there, it was a small price to pay. Plus, he could no longer try to escape, as if he possessed Lila, Félix would stop him, and if he possessed Félix, Lila would stop him.

They still saw Ladybug and Cat Noir looking for them sometimes on the news, but they weren’t even close, and they kept going back to the Shark Law Firm, insisting they must have missed something. They never had, and all it amounted to was that they were wasting their time while Félix and Lila plotted their master plan.

One night, after dinner, and XY had gone to bed, Lila told Félix about her mother, and how she never really paid her any attention, and she was kind of shocked she cared now that she had gone missing. In return, Félix told her about his dad’s death, and how his uncle hadn’t even cared enough to send someone to the funeral.

After hearing the Félix’s story, Lila went to bed, and only after settling down did she realise how awful she felt. At first she thought that it was thinking back to her mother, but that wasn’t it. Lila had given up caring about what she thought a long time ago. Then what prompted this? After a while she realised.

Empathy.

She felt empathetic toward Félix.

No, she thought, that can’t be it. You can’t start getting emotional now.

But she did. And whether or not she wanted to admit it, she had grown to care for Félix Graham de Vanily for more than just his intelligence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I'm going with this. I would like to say that I saw a chapter on the Agreste's Documents chapter by I_dont_care_16 that kind of predicted this, and I kind of panicked because I only noticed the comment as I went to publish this chapter, but it's too late now, this is the direction I'm taking these characters. Sorry if it's kinda unoriginal, but I think it's what makes sense. What I find funny, is that the comment treated it as a joke, so this does indeed prove that I am the stupidest human being on the planet, a title I will wear with pride.


	25. How The Conman Fell For The Fox

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Félix grows conflicted about his feelings about Lila.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy.

Félix wasn’t an emotional person.

This was an obvious fact, as he was perfectly fine screwing people over in order to benefit himself with no guilt. But there was something about Lila Rossi that he just couldn’t put his finger on that made him uneasy.

At first he thought he was concerned about his new partnership with some random fox girl, but, no, that’s not it. Félix never lost to anyone, why should he feel different to her? He attempted to ignore it as they planned their heist.

“What about fire?” Félix suggested, “The Collector would be unable to touch the book if it’s on fire and the book will not regenerate as it is constantly being destroyed.”

“Hmm,” she thought aloud, “Ok, but how do we set fire to it without touching it?” Félix thought.

“Are there any fire-based akuma?”

“I don’t know, I’ll check,” They both reached for the laptop that was on the table between the two of them, and for a brief moment, their hands connected, and Félix’s brain exploded. He quickly pulled his hand back.

“Umm… you search for it,” They were both blushing heavily, but neither noticed, as Lila buried her face in the laptop.

Oh no, Félix thought, this isn’t nervousness about whether or not he could trust her. This was worse. So much worse. He  _ liked _ her.

No no no no… this couldn’t be happening. He looked out for himself, he couldn't worry about somebody else! Even if she was smart…. and pretty… and thinks the same was he did…

“Mademoiselle Rossi!” Butler Jean called, cutting off Félix’s thought, “Monsieur Graham de Vanily! Monsieur Roth! Dinner is ready!”

Félix was worried as he walked to dinner. He needed to defeat Spirifyer to turn Collector back into Gabriel and retrieve the ring. But Lila needed Spirifyer to remain in order for her plan to use the akuma to work. He knew that one of them would have to betray the other in the end, but he just assumed he would be able to pull one over on her, but now he wasn’t so sure.

Félix knew how things like this worked, and he knew that emotions were powerful things. They were his weapon of choice when he attacked his classmates back home. But one scenario stuck out to him. He remembered once when he was very young, he managed to get lunch money from one of his classmates every day for a year in exchange for not telling her crush that she liked him, and he saw her every day for a year as she panicked, thinking he may tell him. He thought back to the Punishers Trio, and the girl who’s name he never learned who had admitted her feelings to his cousin on that video, and how his response had had such an effect that three of them were akumatized. What if she was one of them? He never saw them after they were de-akumatized, what if she was just emotionally vulnerable enough for his simple words to make her weak enough for her to be overtaken by Hawk Moth?

Félix never thought he would be in a position where he would be emotionally vulnerable in that way, and to Lila of all people? Someone who he knew would manipulate him without a second thought.

That night he ate dinner in silence. He didn’t even complain when XY started talking about how he wanted to repurpose the Louvre into a monument to himself.

Félix was stuck. If he betrayed Lila and took the ring for himself, then he would feel guilty, and he couldn’t just leave her. But if he stayed with her, then best case scenario, he never got the ring, worst case scenario, she started to take advantage of the fact that he was a wreck and use him the same way she was using XY at the moment.

For the first time in his life, Félix didn’t know what to do. He had no idea, absolutely none. None of the scenarios he played around with in his head ended well for him, and somehow the ones that ended badly for Lila somehow felt worse for him.

Because for all his knowledge of emotion, he never actually experienced them himself. He took advantage of others whenever they were angry or sad, but he never felt helpless himself.

He looked up from his food and over at Lila, and he felt completely overwhelmed. She really did look pretty, and the time they spent together plotting grand larceny was some of the most fun he had ever had. She was intellectually stimulating, not like those other morons back home. Were other Parisian girls like this? Judging by the three that attacked him last time he was here, probably not.

After dinner, Félix went straight to his room just to think. He was full-on panicking, and had no idea what to do, and the prospect of facing Lila the next morning legitimately scared him. What if he was too obvious? What if she noticed and began manipulating him? What if he never got his hands on the Graham de Vanily Twin Rings, or worse, never escaped Lila? He didn’t sleep that night, staying awake, thinking of one terrible ending after another.

What if Uncle Gabriel found out and tried to use it against him? What if she sacrificed him to the police so that she could escape if things went bad? What if Butler Jean took his vulnerability as a chance to escape and alerted the authorities about what they were doing?

At around midnight, he got up to get a glass of water. His mouth was completely dry, and he didn’t want to think about any more of the possible ways things could go. But as he left his room and walked toward their food supply, he heard a small voice.

“Monsieur Graham de Vanily?”

Félix looked down to see the plush bear standing next to the food.

“What do you want?” Félix said, coldly.

“I noticed you were a little… out of sorts, at dinner tonight, no?” Butler Jean enquired. Félix instantly panicked. If he was obvious enough that the butler noticed, what if Lila noticed? What if XY noticed and told her?

“What do you mean? I’m fine!” he yelled at the butler.

“You do not seem as collected as you usually are, monsieur.” He was right, of course.

“What do you know, you’re just a butler, it’s not your job to meddle in things like this.”

“Yes, but I have… shall we say, experience, with a child quite similar to yourself, and I can tell when something is wrong. Sit down, Félix.” Félix noticed that he had used his first name instead of Monsieur Graham de Vanily. This wasn’t an instruction, it was a request, and Félix somehow felt compelled to. Was this what it was like, being this emotionally vulnerable? “So, what is on your mind?” Did he really think Félix would let up so easily?

“Well, my parents…” the sigh he heard from the bear was enough to make him stop right there.

“Please do not lie to me, monsieur,” the butler said, “You and Mademoiselle Rossi are not honest people, so do not think you can trick me. You do not have to say anything, but I have a feeling you need to get something off your mind.”  Félix had never thought about this before. His speciality was causing negative emotions, not getting rid of them, so maybe he did need help.

“Promise you won’t tell Lila.”

“I swear it.” Félix swallowed his pride, and told him.

“I… I think I have a crush on Lila.” Félix put his face in his hands. Great. Now the butler knew. And whatever he was expecting next, it wasn’t this.

“And what’s so wrong with that?” Félix looked up at him.

“Because she’s like me. She’ll take advantage of this, I know she will. And even if she doesn’t, we can’t both win.”

“Tell me, Félix, what do you like about her?”

“Well, she’s smart, much smarter than the other idiots I’ve met, she's really pretty, and she’s just as cunning as I am... “

“And do you not think she has seen these qualities in you?” Félix stopped to think for a moment. Had she? Félix was normally good at noticing these things, but he had been too busy having a heart attack to be paying attention, and every time he looked at Lila he had a stroke, so nhe wasn’t sure whether or not Lila was panicking the same way he was.

“I don’t know.” he answered.

“And has it been enjoyable, pondering over your feelings.”

“Not in the slightest.”

“So do you want finality?” He did.

“Yes,”

“And if it goes poorly, you can always leave. As you said, you are as cunning as she is, so if she tries to manipulate you, you can abandon her. I am sure you will make the right choice, Félix.” Félix swallowed, nervously. “Now, would you like some food?”

“Yes please.” The butler walked over to the food supply. “And, Butler Jean?” The bear turned around.

“Yes, monsieur?”

“Thank you,” And Félix meant it. Sincerely. And Butler Jean could tell, and that was all the thanks he needed.

“It is my pleasure, Félix.”

And when Félix went back to bed that night, he felt a lot better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so I'm prouder of this than I probably should be, but I always sucked at trying to write romance, and I think I did ok here, so I really do hope you enjoyed. I like the idea that Félix and Lila are making each other better people without realising it. Also, I just want to say that I have read a lost of Chloe redemptions, and not one of them has prominently used Butler Jean, and I really like this character. To be honest, I might write an entire fic about him and his semi-parental relationship with Chloe, I don't know, tell me if you think that would be good.


	26. How The Fox Fell For The Conman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lila grows conflicted about her feelings about Félix.

As they both reached out for the laptop, their hands momentarily connected. Félix instantly pulled back, and Lila began to heavily blush as she buried her face in the laptop.

This is nothing, she thought, Félix is just…. really helpful, it’s nothing important..

“Mademoiselle Rossi!” Butler Jean called, “Monsieur Graham de Vanily! Monsieur Roth! Dinner is ready!”

Dinner was strange that night. XY was still madly throwing out his stupid demands, and Butler Jean was still circling the table asking if they wanted anything more, but Félix was completely silent. He didn’t attempt to shut XY up. He didn’t start ordering around Butler Jean. But worst of all, he didn’t talk with her. And for some reason, she wanted him to.

Not important, she convinced herself, you just… don't like wasting time, not plotting.

After dinner, Félix went straight to bed, and Lila started watching the small TV they had. There was nothing useful on, something about a rogue bread monster, not helpful to their cause. Something felt off though. Usually Félix was with her, and they made fun of whatever stupidly pointless events that had been deemed newsworthy during a crisis such as Spirifyer. And, she oddly missed him. She tried to shake it off.

He’s in the other room, she told herself, you’ll see him again in the morning. You're just frustrated that there’s nothing good on the news tonight.

After an hour or so, she went to bed. The most the news gave her was that there was some invisible girl in the hospital after a bus driver didn’t see her while she was crossing the street. The thing was, Lila felt no remorse whatsoever.

Serves her right, she said to herself, should’ve been more careful when crossing the street.

The thing was, she still felt awful for Félix’s situation with his parents. As she lay awake, her mind kept drifting back to Félix. He was just so smart, and she had been so lucky to have come across him at city hall. He was so cunning, and smart, and oddly sophisticated and gentlemanly for a conman, and handsome... 

No! she told herself, he is at best, a friend, and even then, your Lila Rossi. You don’t have friends. Snap out of it.

She tried thinking about XY instead, but she kept comparing him to Félix. XY was a complete glutton, while Félix only took what he needed. XY was a moron, while Félix and her were planning grand larceny. XY made extravagant demands that he couldn’t even get himself, while Félix only asked for one small ring.

Which he won’t be getting, she reminded herself, to get the ring, he would have to defeat Spirifyer, and I need Spirifyer alive.

* * *

Things didn’t get better the next day. Félix wouldn’t look her in the eye and every time she looked at him, she started thinking about him again, so it was much easier to just look away. They got far less done, and they still didn’t know how they would deal with the Collector’s book.

At one point XY came in and started yelling that he needed at least three different palaces built for him, and she finally lost her patience with him, and by the looks of things, so had Félix.

“YOU’LL GET WHAT YOUR GIVEN, AND MAYBE YOU’D GET MORE IF YOU ACTUALLY HELPED US!” Lila and Félix had yelled at him in unison, and both shoved him out of the room. XY looked shocked at this response, and he pouted out. For the first time in the past day, Félix and Lila looked each other directly in the eye, and Lila was dumbfounded. Why did she care so much about this guy? She had essentially just brought him here randomly a few days ago, and he was getting in the way of her scheme. Why did she still not want to get rid of him?

No, she thought to herself, you have to betray him if you want your plan to succeed.

But for once, she didn’t want to screw him over. She felt… bad. Never before had she felt remorseful to someone. Not even Adrien. So long as she won, she was perfectly fine with it. But now, she felt almost  _ guilty _ , about what she knew she was going to do.

That night, Félix went to bed early again. Lila watched the news, but there was nothing helpful again.

“Butler Jean!” she called.

“Yes mademoiselle?” he asked, walking in.

“Get me something to eat.”

“What would you like, mademoiselle?”

“Anything, I’m just hungry.” The butler went and got her a small trifle from their food supply. He was concerned about her the same way he had been about Félix.

“Mademoiselle, are you ok?” Lila was going to lie, but she honestly didn’t know what was wrong. Maybe the butler could help her figure out what was wrong.

“I don’t know,” she said, truthfully.

“Would you like to talk about it?” She thought. How much damage could the butler really do?   
  


“Sure.”

“So what’s on your mind?”

“Félix,”

“What about him?”

“I feel… bad for him. I don’t get it, I’ve never cared for anyone like this before. And I feel kinda  _ guilty _ that I’m using him. But it can’t be me becoming nicer, I still despise XY.” The butler instantly knew what was wrong, but he let her figure out herself.

“And what do you think, mademoiselle?” Lila thought.

“I don’t know. I would say I see him as an… actual friend, but that’s not it, I’ve had friends before and I’ve never cared for them the way I care for him. Every time I look at him or touch him, I just feel completely overwhelmed.”

“Could you consider that maybe, you like Félix?” Lila feared this, but she had one point she had been using to convince herself otherwise.

“I never felt this way with my previous crush, Adrien. With him, I was only ever concerned with what I was getting, never caring for him.”

“But, mademoiselle, I do not know how to say this without coming across as… insensitive, but could you consider that you were merely... using this Adrien. It would be something I kind of expect from you.” He had said it. The obvious point that she had been denying. So she did like Félix.

“Oh no.”

“What is wrong, mademoiselle?”

“If I’m in love with Félix, there is so much that can go wrong. He could manipulate me. I could become distracted. I could be taken advantage of.”

“But, is this much better?”

“What do you mean?”

“Uncontrollably pining over him? Would being rejected really be much worse? And even if he does try to control you, you can always leave.” Lila was still worried.

“How am I supposed to tell him?”   
  


“I cannot help you with that, mademoiselle. You must work it out yourself.” The butler left the room after this, and Lila didn’t really know what to do. For the time being, she would try to focus on her planning, but now she had something else to plan.

How she was going to tell Félix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably write something besides these guys, it's been three chapters in a row of just them. It'll probably either be another Alya chapter next, or someone completely new, but probably Alya.


	27. Bee Miraculous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alya asks Marinette to help her get information from Chloé

“NO!”

“Please?”

“NO! Daddy’s busy, and doesn’t have time for the likes of you.”

Since Copycat’s visit, Alya had been attempting to follow his lead, Mayor Bourgeois. The problem was that during a city-wide crisis, the mayor was busier than usual, and she couldn’t just go and speak to him.

She had tried breaking into city hall, but it proved difficult to get into, and the mayor himself never seemed to leave. And the only way Alya could access him, was through the one person she dreaded most.

Chloé was the only one the mayor ever left his office anymore, as he was busy trying to fix the chaos Spirifyer caused, and while the city needed him, he still seemed to think Chloé needed him more. She was the only one who he would listen to and if she wanted to question him about Bob Roth, she would need Chloé’s help.

“Come on,” Alya complained, “Why not?”

“Because you’re a loser, and daddy doesn’t have time!” Chloé snapped. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“Ok, is there anything I could do for you?” Alya asked. Chloé scoffed.

“What could  _ you _ possibly have that I could want?” Alya sighed.

“I don’t know, what  _ do _ you want?” Chloé thought for a moment before answering.

“Nothing you could afford, Césaire.” At this point, Alya had basically given up. What was there left that she could do? She’d just have to start plotting to break into city hall. She began to walk toward the door of Le Grand Paris.

“Wait.”

Alya turned around.

“You know how to contact Ladybug, don’t you?”

“Umm, kinda,” Alya replied, “Depends. What do you want?”   
  


“I want my Miraculous back!”

“Umm… I don’t think I can help you with that.”

“And why not, Césaire?”

“I, unlike you, have moral principles, and I’m not going to steal a powerful magic artefact just so you can play superheroes. Wait, why do you even need the Miraculous, you’re Antibug now?” Chloé scowled

“People don’t like Antibug!”

“People don’t like Queen Bee either.”

“CAN YOU GET IT FOR ME OR NOT…”

“Okay… okay… I’ll try.”

* * *

Great, just great.

So now, on top of finding Spirifyer, she also had to convince Ladybug to lend her the Bee Miraculous.

She was about to post something on the Ladyblog when her phone rang.

“Hello?” she said, picking up the phone.

“Alya, it’s me, Marinette!” the voice on the end of the phone said.

“Girl, where’ve you been?” Alya questioned.

“Well, umm, do you know my grandpa Rolland?”

“No.”

“Well, he kinda went on a huge rampage when he turned into Bakerix again, and we only just managed to calm him down.”

“Wait, Bakerix… you mean the giant bread akuma that stole my phone that one time?”

“Oh, umm, sorry about that…”

“Don’t worry, girl! Anyway, you can make up for it by coming over now, I’ve got a project I need your help with.”

* * *

Alya was looking up other potential sightings of Spirifyer on the internet when she heard her father calling from downstairs.

“Alya! Marinette’s here!” she heard Animan’s voice call.

“Great! I’ll be there in a minute!” She covered up the cork board quickly before opening the door to her dad and Marinette.

“Hi, Alya.” Marinette greeted.

“Hi Marinette, close the door!” Marinette closed the door.

“Marinette, I’ve been looking into where I could find Spirifyer.” She pulled the cover off of the cork board, “This is what I’ve got so far.” Marinette looked very confused.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhh,”

“I need your help,”

“What with?”

“Ok, so, I have a new lead, and I need Chloé’s help, but she refuses to help me unless I get her the Bee Miraculous back, and I think you can help with that.” Marinette started to panic and looked incredibly flustered.

“What? Me? How could I help? I can’t help at all! I’m helpless! Completely!” Alya looked at her knowingly.

“Really? Sooooooo… Cat Noir doesn’t visit your balcony at night every once in a while?” Marinette felt relieved.

“Phew… I MEAN, NO, I mean, yes, or, uh,” Marinette sighed, “Yes. Yes he does.”

“So, next time he visits you, could you ask him about it?”

“Uhh… sure. Just, I have a few questions. Umm, firstly, why is there a picture of Ladybug and Cat Noir kissing on the cork board?”

“Oh, well, you remember Desperada…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I guess I'm doing this now. I honestly had serious trouble writing this, and I think it's because I just want to write the villains now, and my very short attention-span is the only reason this isn't a 6th Felix chapter, but the next one will probably be. Sorry if I'm mostly writing them, but I enjoy the villains more than Alya, sorry.


	28. Ondine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ondine moves out of the pool.

When Ondine turned back into Syren was one of the worst experiences of her life, and she legitimately thought she was going to die.

She was already staying off school because of a cold she had, and she felt awful, but then the wave hit, and it was ten times worse. She tried to take a breath, and it just... didn't work. She couldn’t breath. About a minute after that all of her skin had dried up and she felt incredibly burnt. It was absolutely awful.

Until Kim showed up, that is. By the time he was there, she was convinced that this was it for her, and she was going to die. But then, he saved her, and completely wore himself out in the process.

For a few hours after saving her, Dark Cupid was passed out on the pool floor. Apparently, it was incredibly tiring to fly so quickly through the air, so she just let him sleep.

Eventually, the pool staff showed up and got mad, but when they realised that she would literally die outside of the pool, they changed their mind.

However, after a few days, it was clear that she couldn’t live like this permanently. The pool was great as a human, but as Syren, it felt incredibly small and cramped, and she kept wishing it was bigger. Plus, there wasn’t really much to do there. Sure, Ondine loved swimming, but at a certain point you start looking for other entertainment.

Kim kept visiting her every day. Apparently he didn’t want to talk about her near-death experience, which served her just fine, because she didn’t want to talk about it either. And apparently, she still had her bubble ability, so she could let Kim breath underwater too.

The pool staff still didn’t seem to mind her staying there, as she already spent most of her time at the pool, and some of the staff even pitied her for having to stay there and brought her food.

Her parents called sometimes, but honestly, they didn’t seem to care. As far as they were concerned, she was fine, and so long as she was fine, they didn’t need to come see her. Not that Ondine cared much, her parents didn’t acknowledge her much while she was at home, so this wasn’t really all that different. So long as Kim still visited her, she was fine.

But at one of Kim’s visits, she told him about her problem with the pool’s size.

“It’s not that I don’t like it here,” she told him, “It’s just not big enough. I don’t know, maybe since I’m essentially a fish now, this just, doesn’t compare to the entirety of Paris that I had last time I was Syren?”

Ondine really didn’t like complaining, especially to Kim, but he never minded, and always listened to every word. Normally he stayed for a few hours, but after she told him about the size of the pool, he left saying he had to do something. As he was leaving, one of the lifeguards commented on what a lovely boyfriend she had, which made her choke on her lunch.

Later than night, around the pool’s closing time, Kim came back, and this time, he wasn’t alone.

“Ondine!” he called her, as she emerged from the water. “Ondine! I’ve got a solution to your pool-size problem. I was talking to my friends about it and Juleka,” he gestured to the pink, high-heeled akuma next to him, “mentioned that she lived on a houseboat, and that her mother would be happy to have you if you wanted, and, I’ll just let Juleka explain…”

“Well, umm,” Juleka started. “There’s like, the bottom area of the boat, and a year or two ago, there was like, a huge storm, and it damaged the bottom of the boat, and so now that area is mostly flooded. And since we live on a houseboat, and like, the windows are easily big enough to fit a person, you could just like, swim in and out whenever you want if you wanted to like, live in our boat?”

“I’d love to, thanks!” Ondine said, happily. “But how am I supposed to get there? I can’t leave the pool without my skin drying up.

“I think I can help with that.” Kim’s other friend said. He had flaming red hair with black tips, purple skin and a white suit with a small tablet on its arm, and he was holding a small pencil. “I’m Nathaniel, and my akuma power is drawing things with my pencil, and they come to life, so I can draw you a fish tank on wheels so we can get you to the Liberty.” He began to draw on his tablet, and in the air in front of him, the fish tank appeared, and she jumped into it. “I’m sorry if it's a bit cramped, we need to be able to easily move it.”

He was right, it was incredibly cramped. It just barely fit her, but it did work for what they were trying to use it for. On the way there, they got a lot of funny looks from people on the street, who appeared confused as to why she was in a giant fish tank, and she was really glad none of them stopped them to ask questions, because it did really look like they were kidnapping her.

At the Liberty, Ondine jumped out of the tank and into the water.

“Juleka!” she heard a voice call, “Is this ‘ere yer friend ye told me about?”

“Yeah, mom,” Juleka said to her. Her mother walked into view of Ondine to speak to her.

“‘Ello, lassie.” she said to her, and Ondine’s first thought was that she both sounded and looked like a pirate, “So, you want ta stay ‘ere, you can. Ther should be a window near the bottom o’ the boat you can go through to yer room.”

“Thank you, Mrs Couffaine.” Ondine replied.

“Please, lassie, call me Anarka.”

And from that point forward, Ondine lived in the bottom of Juleka’s houseboat. Kim still visited her every day, but now she had the entirety of Paris’s sea to live in rather than just a tiny pool. 

She got along really well with the Couffaines. Juleka didn’t speak to her much, but when she did, they got along pretty well. Luka spent a lot of time in his room playing music and he always played the family whatever he had come up with. And Anarka had basically taken her in as a third child. Her real parents didn’t even call, but Anarka made her three meals a day and let her participate in family activities, and she even put the fish tank Nathaniel drew on the top deck so that Ondine could come up there too.

So Ondine was living in the Liberty with the Couffaines.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw quite a few people asking for Ondine, and I think they meant interactions between her and Kim, but don't worry, I'm planning a Valentines Day chapter at some point, and the two of them will be a part of it. For now, this is a setup for that.


	29. Rose Lavillant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juleka helps Rose with her powers.

It had been a week and Juleka’s life had mostly returned to a state where she wasn’t having daily mental breakdowns.

Luka mostly just stayed in his room playing music, as per usual, Ankara had managed to repurpose the living room to double as a kitchen and Ondine didn’t interact with Juleka much. School was still closed, but her friends had still been contacting her. There was only one problem.

Rose wasn’t there.

Since the wave hit, Rose hadn’t left her house and refused to pick up the phone or respond to Juleka’s messages. Initially Juleka thought that she would just leave Rose alone for a while so she could come to terms with the fact she was Princess Fragrance again, but after a week she began to think something was wrong.

Worse still, tomorrow was Valentine's Day, Rose’s favourite holiday, and Juleka was sure she wouldn’t just ignore it. Surprisingly, even with the citywide crisis, the mayor seemed to think that it was a good idea to go ahead with the Valentine’s Day events anyway, and she was assuming that Rose wouldn’t want to miss it.

Juleka had had enough. Rose couldn’t hide in her house forever and it was time to stop pretending she could. And this was why Juleka was outside Rose’s house banging on the door loudly for the third time that week.

“ROSE!” she yelled.

* * *

Rose was still in her room wallowing in self-pity. She had asked her parents not to let any of her friends in if they came looking for her, and that she needed some time to herself, but they were getting impatient.

“You have to leave at some point,” her father told her. She was going to respond when they heard a voice from outside.

“ROSE!”

She froze.

“Don’t let her in!” she asked her father.

“I’m sorry Rose, but you have to talk to your friends at some point.” He began to walk downstairs.

“No! Please!” In desperation, she grabbed her perfume bottle, pointed it at her dad and pulled the trigger. A blast of pink smoke came from the bottle, and when it cleared, Mr Lavillant was standing there, bowing.

“ _ At your service Princess Fragrance _ ” he sang. Rose screamed, and threw the bottle to the other side of the room, cowering in the corner.

* * *

Juleka was determined not to give up this time. The other times this week she had come to find Rose, she ended up leaving. Not this time.

She kept banging on the door and in her other hand she was ringing Rose’s phone. She was going to try going to the back door when she looked up at Rose’s window and noticed a familiar pink smoke.

“ROSE!”

At this point Juleka was getting pretty desperate, and there was clearly something wrong. Unfortunately, her power was completely worthless. Making people look like her was pointless, and it did not at all help her get to Rose.

“ROSE, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!” she was looking up at the window. “Please let me in. Maybe I can help you, just please.” She was begging at this point.

After waiting a few more minutes it was clear Rose wouldn’t let her in.

  
  


“OK, YOU LEAVE ME NO CHOICE” She pointed her right hand up at the window, and began to shoot. She heard a nervous squeal from inside. It was her first time using her power, and honestly it felt pathetic, but she had to do something.

“I’LL STOP WHEN YOU LET ME IN. YOU CAN’T HIDE FOREVER.”

She could hear Rose moving about inside. She was going to yell again when the door began to open, and she stopped shooting.

“Thank you,” she said, walking in. Inside, Mr Lavillant appeared to be in a sort of trance, and the house looked the same as it normally did. Neat and tidy, flowers planted in a pot next to the TV and a three-legged table that Mr Lavillant never got around to fixing. Juleka began to walk upstairs to Rose’s room.

“Rose?”

“What do you want?” Rose replied, miserably. She was sitting in the corner of her room in complete darkness, making the pink painted walls look grey and depressing.

“Well, you haven’t left the house in a week, and you won’t answer your phone. No one has managed to contact you and you look incredibly depressed. Your dad appears to be hypnotised and I’m your best friend, meaning it’s my job to be worried about you.” She knelt down next to Rose. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at me!” Rose was crying. “I’m Princess Fragrance. I’m a monster.”

“We’ve been over this, you’re still Rose.” Rose shook her head.

“It’s not as simple as that. My power is dangerous. I can’t get rid of this bottle.” She threw it to the other side of the room, but when she turned back, it was in her hand. “And every time I get stressed or panic too much, my first instinct is to shoot it. I can’t stop it.” Juleka didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m a danger to everyone around me, so you should just leave, before I hurt you too.” Juleka had one idea. She didn’t know if it would work, but it was worth a try.

“I could shoot you” Rose looked incredibly confused. “No! I mean, if I can transform you into a clone of me… into another Reflekta, then you shouldn’t have your perfume bottle, and you won’t have to look like Princess Fragrance anymore and…” She looked at Rose, “You get it. I can turn you into me and you won’t have your perfume gun anymore. Would that be ok?” Rose didn’t hesitate at all.

“Yes, of course,  _ please _ ” Reflekta pointed her right arm at Rose and shot.

The effect was instant. She wasn’t looking at the green-skinned monster anymore, but a tall, bright pink mutant, and the perfume gun was gone.

“Thank you!” Rose said.

“Rose!” her father called from downstairs. Rose looked incredibly received.

“Dad! Dad, are you ok?” They could hear Mr Lavillant walking up the stairs.

“Yes, what happened?” he asked. He looked bewildered.

“I… umm, I hypnotised you by accident. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He rubbed his forehead, and looked sideways. “Oh, I see you let Juleka in. Have you finally decided to leave your room?” Rose smiled at him.

“Yes, thanks dad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have quite a few things I want to say here, so to begin with, this was supposed to come out on Wednesday, but I was busy, so I'm sorry for making you wait. Secondly, I'm planning a several-chapter long Valentine's Day plotline tomorrow. And thirdly, I came across a work that was inspired by this one, and while it contained things in which I don't support, I'm somewhat touched that someone cared enough about my story to make their own version. I would prefer not to have my name attached to it, as that just isn't my kind of thing, but I'm glad that people are enjoying my work so much.


	30. Valentine's Day Part One: Prior Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day before Valentine's Day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day

Most of the people hit by the wave saw it as a tragedy, a great disaster, something that would go down in history as one of the worst things to ever happen to Paris. Marc Anciel felt somewhat guilty saying that wasn’t the case for him.

But I mean, could you blame him? Regular Marc was boring and shy, if creative. Reverser was, there was really no other word for it,  _ cool _ . He had a huge paper airplane glider thing and now he could invert anyone he wanted, and as a writer, that was incredibly helpful.

Just think of the possibilities. Before, if he wanted to write another Mightyllustrator comic with Nathaniel, he would have to imagine what Nathaniel would be like as a villain for the Evillustator character, but now, he could just temporarily reverse him and, after he saw how Nathaniel acted, reverse him again to turn him back to normal. It was a simple and easy way of getting inspiration.

The only problem was that this didn’t work with all types of stories. He and Nathaniel were attempting to write a romantic plot in their next comic, and Marc had been having trouble finding inspiration for it. The other problem was that they had a deadline of tomorrow, Valentine’s Day, and so far they were stuck on the ending.

The problem was that neither Marc nor Nathaniel knew how to write a conclusion. Both of them were better with a setup that they could just keep adding too and inventing new, smaller stories for their characters. Bringing that overarching story to an end is far harder.

Marc and Nathaniel were both sitting in Marc’s room brainstorming ideas. They had no idea how to bring their story to a close, and even though the two main characters were pre-existent people, Marc reversing them wouldn’t work.

Reverser had been throwing around paper airplanes and Evillustator was drawing a picture of the painting on Marc’s wall. For some reason, watching the paper airplanes float around helped Marc think, which was probably another perk of being Reverser. Plus, so long as he was careful to pay attention to them, they wouldn’t hit anyone.

“We could try, just, ending it as is?” Nathaniel suggested, “Leave it up to interpretation what comes next.” Marc shook his head.

“There’s a difference between leaving this up to interpretation and just writing an unfulfilling story. What we have isn’t good enough as is.” Reverser looked down at his page, taking his eyes off of the paper airplane for a moment.

That was all it needed. As soon as Marc turned to the page, the projectile found its target and locket onto Evillustrator.

“Ah!”

Marc turned around too late to see the painting on his wall was beginning to fade.

“What? What’s going on?” Marc questioned. Nathaniel was attempting to rip the drawing tablet off of his arm.

“Ugh!” he yelled, “I hate all this art, why do I have this on me?” But Marc wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying, he was too focused on what had happened to the painting. Reverser created a new paper airplane to fix Nathaniel before getting an idea.

“Nathaniel, I know what to do,”

“What?”

“When you got reversed, you were sketching that painting.”

“So?”

“And now it’s gone. Normally the things you draw appear, meaning I don’t just reverse personality. I can reverse powers.”

“How does that help us?” Marc looked away from the empty space on the wall where the painting was.

“I know where we’re going to get the ending to our comic,” he said, “Dark Cupid.”

* * *

Ok.

It had been a week and he was finally ready to initiate his plan.  Félix and Lila were both still plotting their heist, and Félix was going to begin his other plan.

“We need to shield ourselves against Gorizilla’s tracking ability,” he said. He was about to suggest something when Lila cut him off.

“What about Animaestro?” she suggested. Félix couldn’t believe his luck.

“Yes, Animaestro would be able to mask us completely, he can shapeshift,” Félix replied, “But how do we convince him to help us?”   
  


“We’ll need to either kidnap him or manipulate him.” Félix pulled the laptop toward him and began to search the internet. His plan was going better than usual.

“Oh, look,” he said, pretending to be surprised. “He has a movie premiere tomorrow. We could go to that, see what we can find out. I’d say we could easily break in without anyone noticing.”

“That’s a great idea. I can create illusions around us so that we’ll still look normal to each other, but to everyone else, we’ll look like guests of the premiere. Who’s going?”

Félix began to read out the names of the guests invited, but he was amazed things went as smoothly as they did. Lila had no objections to going to a movie premiere with him on Valentine’s Day, and all he had to do was word it differently.7

Little did he know, Lila was thinking the same thing.

* * *

Kim was walking towards the Liberty. He still didn’t know what he was going to do, but things couldn’t go worse than they went last year, so that’s a positive. And anyway, he already knew that Ondine liked him, so they probably wouldn’t have another Dark Cupid situation, even if he was literally Dark Cupid. He was standing next to the houseboat, looking down at the water.

“Ondine!” he called. He could see the window of the boat opening through the water, and Syren swimming upward, and after a second, she emerged. She looked around for a moment before noticing Kim.

“Oh, hi Kim!” she called up at him.

“Umm, hi Ondine, I just wanted to ask you if,” this was a lot harder than last year, “If, well… I got tickets to the new Thomas Astruc movie, and I was wondering if you would want to go to it with me?” Kim blushed, and Ondine would have too, if she wasn’t already purple.

“I’d love to, Kim, but I can’t spend long periods of time out of the water. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well, actually I may have an answer to that. You know my friend Max, right?” Ondine nodded. “Yeah, well he loves investing things and working with machinery and stuff, and he made this.” Kim held up something that looked like a metal hat. “It’s like a sprinkler that you can wear, and you should be able to move around on land without your skin drying up.” He passed the helmet down to her.

“Well, in that case, sure!”

* * *

A few metres away from Kim and Ondine, Juleka and Rose were sitting on the Liberty’s deck, a few hours after Juleka had gone to get Rose from her house. Both of them still looked like Reflekta.

“I called it,” Juleka said, referring to Kim and Ondine.

“Huh,” Rose said, “I thought it would be Kim and Alix.”

“Anyway,” Juleka began, looking at Rose, “Are you spending Valentine’s Day with anyone?”

“You know perfectly well I’m spending tomorrow with you, Juleka.” And that was exactly the answer she wanted to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm making this a Valentine's Day trilogy of three chapters, and while a lot of it is just going to be me forcing my headcannon ships into this fic, there is an actual plot regarding Dark Cupid, so the next chapter will have actual plot in it.


	31. Valentine's Day Part Two: Dark Cupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The premiere of Thomas Astruc's film, and Marc's plan.

For some reason, Mayor Bourgeois thought that it was a good idea to go ahead with the Valentine’s Day festivities in spite of the crisis going on, not that Lila was complaining. It made her day with Félix all the better.

However, she did need to actually see if they could find Thomas Astruc. While the main reason that she had brought them there was the obvious “spending Valentine’s Day at the movies with Félix” part, she did need to actually keep going with her plan.

First of all, they knocked out two of the guests in an alleyway, and Lila created an illusion to make her and Félix look like them before approaching the front door. They had taken the guests backstage passes in order to get to Thomas Astruc, but they were also planning on actually sitting down and watching the movie. They had both come to the conclusion that if two of the guests just randomly never made it to the viewing itself, and stayed backstage the whole time, it would look suspicious.

The security guard at the door looked suspicious but he let them in anyway when he saw their pass, and when they looked back, they realised that he was looking at everyone suspiciously, and he seemed to be a pretty paranoid guy.

Lila wasn’t that surprised at how easily they got in, but there still weren’t many eventful obstacles. Everything went fine. There were a lot of people on the guests list that didn’t come, but that was probably because they had been re-akumatized. Clara Nightingale wasn’t there, neither was Jagged Stone or Nadja Chamack.

When they sat down to actually watch the movie, Félix’s arm was resting on hers, and she had a bit of a heart attack, but besides that, everything was going well.

* * *

Kim and Ondine were running late. While Kim having giant wings was helpful, the fact that, even with Max’s sprinkler helmet, Ondine was still incredibly slow on land. They just barely made it to the premiere before they closed the doors.

The security guard didn’t seem too happy that he was letting in a dark angel armed with a bow and arrow and a mermaid with a trident, but they had tickets, and he begrudgingly had to let them enter.

The movie lasted two hours, and after it was over, Kim took Ondine down to the Pont des Arts. There was a specific reason that he brought her here of all places.

“Ondine?” he said.

“Yes, Kim”

“Last Valentine’s Day I came here with someone else. Someone who,” he took off the brooch, “I now see, didn’t deserve to be treated with the kindness I showed her. She wasn’t a nice person, plain and simple. But you, you’re the opposite. You’re nice, and kind, and beautiful, and so Ondine,” he held the brooch out to her, “Will you be my Valentine?”

But he didn’t get to hear her response, because at that moment, a small, black and white paper airplane flew into Kim, and everything turned to chaos.

* * *

Marc’s idea was somewhat morally questionable, but since they would be able to undo everything, it would probably be fine.

The plan was that they would invert Dark Cupid, changing his power from making people hate each other into regular cupid’s ability, making people fall in love. This way Marc and Nathaniel can observe what happens by manufacturing the situation and basing the ending to their comic on that.

And once they were done and had written their conclusion, they would reverse Kim again, fixing everything and life would go on as usual.

What could possibly go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't too eventful, it's mostly just leading into part three, which I can already tell, I'm going to enjoy writing.


	32. Valentine's Day Part Three: Animaestro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything devolves into chaos as Dark Cupid begins rampaging around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe nobody will notice what day it is...

“THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA”

Marc had thrown his paper airplane to reverse Dark Cupid and everything had devolved into chaos. Dark Cupid had shot Syren, who seemed to fall madly in love with him at this, and had grabbed him as he attempted to fly off, and some helmet she was wearing had fallen off, and now he was flying around, randomly shooting people with his arrows.

They had attempted to reverse him again, but Marc had missed and hit Animaestro, who, instead of turning into harmless cartoon characters, had become a giant realistic-looking tank, which had shot Marc off his glider. Reverser was lying unconscious in a bush and Nathaniel was now running for his life from a tank, a fish lady and the angel of love.

“WHAT WERE WE THINKING?” he yelled, hiding behind a piece of debris.

* * *

Juleka and Rose were both walking through Pont des Arts. Rose loved pointing out all the couples, and Juleka was just happy to be there, and this year it was extra interesting because everyone was an akuma. Anyway, she just enjoyed hearing Rose rambling to her.

“Oo, look Juleka, Ivan and  Mylène!” Rose was pointing excitedly at the giant figures of Stoneheart and Horrificator, who were attempting to get ice cream from Glaciator. It was an almost comical scene, with a giant ice cream man trying to serve the stuff with a tiny scooper to a massive stone creature and a slime mutant. Juleka was about to comment on it, but before she could, Rose frantically pointed at the bridge, with Syren and Dark Cupid on it. “LOOK! It’s Kim and Ondine!” Juleka remembered all too well what happened last year when Kim was on that bridge, and it ended with her throwing Luka’s guitar off the boat and calling Rose just to yell at her, so not her best Valentine’s Day. But once again before she could say anything, a small paper airplane hit Kim, and he began madly firing arrows.

“Oh no…” Without a second thought, she grabbed Rose and began to run. She wasn’t certain what was going on but she was sick of all this magical garbage. He had to protect Rose, that was her only goal. She pulled Rose in behind a building and stood, looking around the wall.

“Ok.” she began, “We’ll stay here until whatever this is ends.” She leaned her neck around the wall, looking at what was going on. Kim was flying around shooting arrows and Reverser appeared to be trying to stop him. She turned back to Rose. “You ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Rose replied, quietly. She also remembered last year, where Juleka had yelled at her and Kim went around making people hate each other.

It all happened in an instant. Juleka was looking away from the wall and at Rose when a red blur flew by and a small red arrow went flying toward Rose. Juleka instandly panicked and took a step to the left quickly and held her arms out, shielding Rose from the arrow that had his her directly in the chest.

“Juleka!” Rose screamed. Juleka had completely frozen for a second, but when she turned back to Rose, she now had bright red lip gloss. She was limping toward Rose with her arms open.

“Rose, come here, Rose!” She said, but the comfortingly quiet way she said thing was gone, and she sounded insane. “I love you Rose, don’t you love me? Come here!” Princess Fragrance had begun running. She didn’t know what to do or where she was going but she knew that Ladybug and Cat Noir would fix everything,and for the time being, Rose just wanted to be away from Juleka. It was giving her flashbacks to last year, and seeing her sweet Juleka entranced by something so awful.

There was a giant tank shooting things, but Rose barely noticed as she hid behind a large piece of rubble, where she found the two people she never thought she’d see here, making out.

“Lila?!”

* * *

Everything was going so smoothly. She and Félix had seen the movie, and they could see Thomas Astruc from where they were sitting. When the film ended, they both slipped away from the crowd and Lila used her illusions in order to get them into the offices. They hadn’t had time to research where Thomas Astruc would be, as they had decided to do this the previous day, so they had to resort to looking around the building. They were at the third office when they heard an explosion outside.

Félix stared out the window.

“Oh no…” Félix said.

“What is it,” Lila replied. Félix pointed down at the scene below. Down there was Thomas Astruc, hiding from a chaotic scene with Dark Cupid, Reverser and Syren. “Uh oh.”

“We have to get out there.” Félix said, but he never got a chance, as at that moment, an arrow came flying through the window and hit him on the forehead.

“Félix!” Lila said. Félix had frozen for a moment, and then turned to her. His lips had turned a bright red colour and he had a blank look on his face for a moment.

“Lila, have I ever told you how much I love you?” he said, his voice turned sickly sweet. Lila blushed furiously and looked him in the eye. The way Félix was standing there no longer held any of his sophisticated charm, and in his eye was the glint of madness. She slowly tried to back away, she seemed unable to turn away from him.

“Félix… are you ok?” she asked him, worriedly.

“Of course I’m ok Lila. I’m more than ok, I’m fantastic!” he was waving his arms around now. “I love you, you’re the best! Let's go back to the Eiffel Tower together, and we can throw XY off it together!” Lila wouldn’t lie, that sounded incredibly appealing to her, and XY was a pain, so to dispose of him would be great, but at that moment, an explosion was set off behind them, blasting the door.

“OH NO” The blast had knocked out Félix and he had landed on top of her, and both of their disguises had vanished. She looked sideways to see a giant tank wearing a Ladybug mask pointing toward the building and firing directly toward them. She was going to run, but she couldn’t leave Félix there. Lila used her illusion powers on Animaestro, which seemed to confuse him, but he was still firing, so she didn’t have much time.

She lifted Félix up in a bridal carry and began making her way toward the door. However, she didn’t get that far until the tank had finally decided to think for once, and had instead shot the roof, causing a huge pile of rubble to block her path.

Lila was trapped, and she would have to use her illusions to sneak past the tank itself. She carefully created a duplicate of herself, and had it run across the room, causing the tank to begin firing at it. By the time it noticed, they were gone.

She lay Félix down next to a large pile of rubble. She didn’t want to know what was going on, but they were both getting out of there, and there was only one way to free Félix from whatever had happened.

She pursed her lips and kissed him, and for a moment, all the chaos around her went away as the bright red colour on Félix’s lips went back to being regular pink. But this was short-lived, as she heard a voice behind her.

“Lila?!”

In all her rush to escape, she had forgotten to put the illusions back up. Standing over the two of them was Rose. It was too late to confuse her, they had been seen.

“Uhh… hi Juleka,” Lila said. “Juleka, you can’t tell anyone you’ve seen me here”

“It’s Rose,” She was beginning to forget that she looked like Reflekta, “Why not? Your mother’s been so worried. And why is Adrien’s cousin with you?” she pointed at Félix.

“Umm… I can’t explain right now, I need to go,” she lifted Félix and began to walk away.

“Lila, wait!” But at that moment, someone grabbed her from behind.

“Rose, don’t run away from me like that, I love you.” Juleka said. Rose tried to pull away, but it was too late. Lila and Félix were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a week, I've been busy, sorry. Also, what was supposed to be a three-parter has turned into a four-parter, just because I wanted to get this out today so I won't keep you waiting any longer. Also, I think chapter two was too short, so that's another reason I'm making a fourth.


	33. Valentine's Day Part Four: Battle Of Reverser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel has to reach Marc in order to stop Dark Cupid and Animaestro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took long enough, but I've finally finished it...

Gabriel was furious.

It was Valentine’s Day, a day he had been waiting for all year, and it was a complete failure. He had hoped that Ladybug and Cat Noir would have stopped Spirifyer by now, but apparently not. How ironic that the only akuma they’ve failed to catch is the one he needs them to stop.

Today was going to be the day he finally won. He was going to get his son together with Miss Rossi, and then he would bring back Catalyst. Then, as Scarlet Moth, he would re-akumatize all the broken-hearted teenagers and finally beat Ladybug and Cat Noir. Just think! Volpina, Riposte, Stormy Weather, maybe he could even have had a successful Princess Justice.

But now, that plan was in ruins! He was watching the news, and apparently, Dark Cupid and Animaestro was causing chaos at Pont des Arts, HIS minions, and he was profiting off of none of it.

This was a disaster…

* * *

Everything had failed completely.

Nathaniel was on the roof of a nearby building trying to formulate a plan.

“Oh goodness what do I do.” he thought aloud. He had drawn himself a telescope and was looking down on the Pont des Arts for Reverser. The only way they could fix this was by reversing Animaestro and Dark Cupid.

He had no idea what to do, and he was going to just run down and hope for the best when the door to the roof behind him burst open. Two Reflektas walked onto the roof, one attempting to hug the other

“Nathaniel!” One called, “Help!”

“Rose, calm down, come here!” The other said, her arms outstretched in front of her. Nathaniel thought back to the first Evillustator, and remembered something he did on the news footage.

He lifted his pencil and drew a small, clear box that appeared above one of the Reflektas. When it had fully materialised, it fell, trapping her.

“Who are you two?” Nathaniel asked. The one within the box was banging on her see-through prison, trying desperately to reach the other.

“It’s me, Rose,” One said. “And that’s Juleka. She was hit by one of the arrows.” She looked towards Juleka. “I saw you up here and thought you could help.” Nathaniel was trying to assess the situation. He looked down on the havok below and finally, his eyes fell on a limp, black and white body. He had found Reverser.

“We have to get to Marc.” He said to her, pointing down at him. Marc is the only one who can fix this.”

“Why can’t you just put one of those boxes over Kim?” Rose replied, pointed at Juleka, who was madly pushing on the wall of the box. Nathaniel shook his head.

“No good. The problem with the boxes is that they can be lifted off. It works for someone like Reflekta, because she’s not tall enough to push it upward. But Dark Cupid can fly, so the box would just be a hindrance.” He thought. “Surely Ladybug and Cat Noir should be here by now?”

“We can’t worry about that. What are we going to do?” Marc’s body was on the other side of the carnage below, so they would have to pass the tank and Dark Cupid. What to do…

“We’re going to just have to sneak by.” He said as he drew a sheet of metal on his tablet.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Dead serious. I have to fix this, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“No no no, I’ll help”

“Brilliant.” Nathaniel headed for the door, carrying the sheet of metal. They walked down the stairs, past the front desk and over to the front door.

“Under here,” he said to her, “Dark Cupid’ll have a harder time seeing us.” Slowly, under the metal sheet, they edged their way closer to Marc.

A large explosion rang out. They could hear the wheels of a tank passing by, but after a few seconds it began to roll away. They continued.

They were nearing Reverser. So close…

BANG

Nearby cannonfire blew the cover off them, and they knew instantly that they had been spotted. Animaestro was looming over them, and Dark Cupid had shot an arrow towards them.

Quickly, Nathaniel drew a large circle on his tablet, and a shield appeared in front of them that easily blocked the arrow. But when the cannon began to fire, he knew it wouldn’t hold long.

They were cornered, and he had no idea what to do. They only had one hope, and Nathaniel didn’t have any idea how this would help them, but it was his final idea. He turned his pencil over, and erased the box that was trapping Reflekta.

“ROSE!”

Dark Cupid turned his head to look toward the noise. Juleka was charging toward them, blindly unaware of the severe danger of the situation. Animaestro ignored her, and shot again at the shield, almost destroying it. Reflekta began banging on it, and at any moment it would collapse, and they would have failed completely.

A large crack formed through the shield, as Animaestro, Reflekta and Dark Cupid all attacked it. They were all so distracted, that nobody noticed a small book flying through the air.

At one last shot, the shield at last broke in two, but before Animaestro could do anything, he disappeared. One moment he was there and the next, gone, just like that. Rose and Nathaniel were confused, but then they noticed a figure behind Dark Cupid. The Collector stood there, book in hand, ready for battle.

Juleka had run to Rose as soon as the shield had broken, and was clinging desperately to her, as Kim turned his attention to Gabriel and began to fire, but Mr Agreste was faster than he had anticipated, and while Dark Cupid managed to avoid the book, he was unable to hit the Collector with an arrow.

Nathaniel capitalised on the opportunity immediately. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him toward Marc’s body, and reached him in seconds. He shook him, desperately.

“Marc!” he yelled, “Marc, you have to wake up, please! We can still fix things, you just have to wake up!” He was hoping for something, anything, just a sign of life from his friend. He had to wake up, it was their only hope.

Dark Cupid was still unable to hit Gabriel, but did manage to trap him underneath some falling debris that hadn't properly fallen since Animaestro hit it, and looked back toward Nathaniel. He pulled his bow’s string and shot toward him.

Things seemed to move in slow motion. The arrow flew through the air toward Nathaniel, and the thought that they wouldn’t be able to fix things flew through his mind. It was metres from his face, when a large pink body threw herself in front of him and took the arrow instead.

Rose froze for a moment, and then her lips gained a red lip gloss. Juleka ran toward her, knocking her over, and Nathaniel took the time Rose had given her to draw a glass of water and splash it over Marc’s face. He woke with a start.

“Marc!” Nathaniel yelled. “Reverse Kim, hurry!” Reverser looked confused, and then a look of realisation hit him as Dark Cupid began firing again. Marc jumped on his glider and flew toward Kim.

Nathaniel needed to ensure that Marc beat him, and he drew a large rectangular box. It materialised above Dark Cupid, and for a moment, no one moved. Then the box fell.

He was right, the box was only a mere hindrance to Kim. But a hindrance was all Reverser needed to fire a paper airplane toward him.

* * *

Ladybug and Cat Noir woke on a rooftop, hugging each other.

“Ow, my head,” Cat Noir said, with a pained expression.

“What happened?” Ladybug asked. They looked for the villain they were fighting. Dark Cupid had been rampaging again but had hit them both with his arrows. Looking over at Pont des Arts, they saw that Dark Cupid was lying on the floor, and what appeared to be Evillustator and Reverser were standing next to them.

“Do you want to go deal with that or should we just… ?”

“Nah, I’ve had enough for today, they seem to have things under control. We should get back to looking for Spirifyer.”

Cat Noir picked up his baton and used it to run over the rooftops, with Ladybug following behind him.

* * *

Juleka woke on the floor, with Rose lying on top of her. She quickly tried to move aside, but she was unable to as Rose stirred in her arms.

She didn’t want to wake her, so she just stayed there. Rose had been through enough, Juleka should just let her sleep.

* * *

Kim stirred on the floor of Pont des Arts. He slowly stood up, rubbing the back of his head.

“Ow, what happened?” Marc and Nathaniel looked at each other, guiltily.

“Well… umm…”

“WAIT” Kim yelled, “Where’s Ondine?!” He ignored Marc and Nathaniel and ran toward where they had been standing when he lost consciousness.

“ONDINE! ONDINE!” He heard a voice below him.

“I’m down here Kim!” He looked under the bridge.

“Oh, thank goodness…” She had fallen off the bridge and into the river and must have remained there the whole time. Kim still needed an explanation, but he supposed that could wait, as he flew off the side of the bridge towards Ondine.

“Want to finish Valentine’s Day?” he asked. She grinned at him.

“You bet.”

* * *

Gabriel woke several hours later, with some construction workers having moved the rubble in order to release him. Everything ached. He really did underestimate how much he put his akumas through.

On his way home he tried to recall what had happened. Dark Cupid was on the news, he got angry, he realised that Ladybug and Cat Noir wouldn’t be able to get back to searching for Spirifyer until the problem was resolved, he came and saved that boy from Animaestro, and then Dark Cupid crushed him…

The Collector was nearing his home. He put his life on the line today, but the heroes better hurry up and fix everything quickly, because he wouldn’t be doing it again...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a fun one to write. I'm really enjoying this, and I think I'll either do Alya or the villains next. I'm not sure which, probably the villains since they're my favourite. ALSO, Gabriel is actually doing stuff, about time. I won't lie, I legit forgot about Hawk Moth for quite a few chapters, and with this one I kinda wrote myself into a corner before I realised "Oh yeah, he exists" so he's doing things now. Anyway, this is the last Valentine's Day chapter, it took several weeks, and it is definitely not Valentine's Day anymore, but hey, I tried.


	34. So What Are We Doing Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Félix recovers from being knocked out by Animaestro as Lila has the idea to dig into Agreste Mansion.

Lila made it back to the Eiffel Tower not long after the left Pont des Arts, and by the time she was back, she had realised how much of an issue this really was.

Rose knew that she wasn’t missing, and just in hiding, which means that soon, the heroes will probably know that she wasn’t in hiding. They also now knew that Félix was with her, and to make matters worse, they watched the news coverage of Dark Cupid’s rampage, and it involved Animaestro being trapped in Collector’s book, meaning that they can’t use him with him trapped, and even if they somehow freed him, they just saw that in a fight between the two, Animaestro doesn’t stand a chance.

But at the moment Lila didn’t care about any of that, because apparently, Félix was hit worse than she thought.

The explosion hurt her, sure, but she still felt fine. But then she remembered that she was Volpina again, and Volpina was far more durable than Félix. So a cannon’s explosion right next to him, was a lot more serious than she had initially thought.

At first, she thought he would be fine, just needed some rest. He was still breathing, and moved occasionally, but by the next morning, he still wasn’t awake. Their brainstorming wasn’t nearly as fun without him, and despite Butler Jean insuring her that things would be fine, Lila was worried.

Looking through the Ladyblog, it looked like Rose had indeed felt the need to inform Alya of their meeting, because there was an article about a sighting of her and Félix. It didn’t look like the heroes were paying this much mind, thank goodness, as they seemed to think that defeating Spirifyer and using the Miraculous Cure would fix everything, which was true, but Lila wasn’t sure how they planned to do that without the only people who knew where he was.

  
  


Lila had run out of ideas, and without Félix there to help, it didn’t look like she would have many more. None of these akuma’s seemed like they would be helpful. What could she do, use pigeons to defeat Mr Agreste? Unlikely to work at best.

They could use Copycat, who still seemed to be angry with Cat Noir, but there were a lot of problems with that. To begin with, he hates Cat Noir, not Gabriel Agreste, so getting him to help would be tricky. And even then, what’s stopping Collector from just trapping him in the book.

She did have one thought though. They could enter the basement without going through the house. She hadn’t worked out any of the details yet and she didn’t even know if it would work, but if there were any akumas capable of digging or destroying the floor, then they could tunnel into Hawk Moth’s lair and ignore Gabriel entirely.

At around midday, Félix finally awoke.

“Lila!” He called, leaving his room.

“Félix?!” Lila asked, “Good, you’re finally awake, how are you feeling?”

“Well, my entire body aches, and I don’t remember much, so I was hoping you could fill me in? What happened after the arrow hit me? I assumed that was the point I was knocked out, but I don’t know.” Lila blushed.

“Well, umm…” She didn’t look him in the eye, “You were… hypnotized. By Dark Cupid. He made you hate everybody, and then you got hit by Animaestro.” She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to lie, but Lila didn’t feel comfortable telling Félix that he had fallen madly in love with her.

“Well, I must have been hit pretty badly,” he said, walking over to the table.

“You were,” Lila informed, “Animaestro had turned into a tank, and he was firing at us. I think my akuma powers protected me. OH! I’ve come up with another idea of how to get into Hawk Moth’s lair and I wanted your thoughts.”

“OK,” Félix responded, “So what are we doing now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a shorter chapter, mostly just Félix recovering.


End file.
